


(how to be) somebody you miss

by starklystar



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bodyguard, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - High School, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Injury, Breaking Up & Making Up, Childhood Friends, Explosives, Friends to Lovers, Hurt Tony Stark, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Palladium Poisoning, Slow Burn, The Avengers (2012) Compliant, and War, and breaking up again and making up again, and the dose of childhood trauma that comes with howard stark, but there are discussions of weapons, i feel like howard and obadiah should be warning tags in and of themselves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:08:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 50,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25954261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starklystar/pseuds/starklystar
Summary: Tony is fifteen when Steve leaves him for the first time.The second time, Steve is twenty seven and they break up.At thirty six, they both promise never to try again.So when they meet again at the helicarrier, Tony thinks the universe should really stop playing this cosmic joke on him.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 127
Kudos: 421





	1. Tony - 1983-1985

**Author's Note:**

> this… seriously went out of control. anon requested for a stevetony as exes fic and my brain insisted on this. i hope you enjoy it anon! i’m going to post it gradually because if i don’t start posting i’m going to spiral even more out of control :)
> 
> anyway, tony starts out being young and writing his thought process was hard but this ended up being very personal cause i based it off my own experience of starting university at fifteen, so i hope that while there is some cognitive and social dissonance in how tony thinks, there’s context for that cause he’s young but also thinking older than himself (?)
> 
> i did not tag this as age difference because at the time that they’re young, nothing happens. they become friends, and when i said slow burn, i meant slow. but if you find some of the discussions a bit sensitive, please tell me and i'll try to tag it accordingly
> 
> exploring tony as he grows up is something i’ve always wanted to do because i’ve never really seen that part of him experiencing everything earlier than everyone explored, and his struggle fitting in with society in so many different ways because of who he is as a stark but also who he is at his own level of development with all the pressures put on him. i hope i did all that justice, and i’m rambling now so. 
> 
> the story is surprisingly going to be avengers compliant, it’ll have angsty moments of the birth of iron man and the palladium poisoning in it, so that’s what most of the warnings are about :)
> 
> hope you enjoy the story!

Tony has a system of rules. He worked it out a decade ago.

First, no school reunions.

The only one worth meeting from school was a certain Steve Rogers, and as much of a masochist as Tony can sometimes be, he already sees Steve often enough each week to fulfil his pain quota.

Second, when Steve brings home a new date, don’t panic until they pass the six-month mark.

None of them have reached beyond four months, which – Tony thinks with no small amount of bittersweet pride – is two months less than how long Steve had been willing to bear with Tony. (And even if anyone managed to outlast Steve’s time with Tony, Tony has no right to deny Steve his happiness just because Tony never deserved that happily ever after).

Third, if Tony ever thinks of those six months when he had woken up in Steve’s arms, safe in the warmth of their home, then Tony plays Back in Black.

He drowns his thoughts out until all he can hear is the thundering drums that rattle against his heart, until he can forget, for even the slightest moments, that either of them existed.

Admittedly, that second rule was harder to follow than the others, but Tony _has_ been getting better at it. Most days, sleeping starts to get easier, the world stops blurring away, he will be able to smile at Steve without the long shadows of their fights looming over them.

And yet, some days, when he sees Steve kissing another woman with all the gentleness that used to belong to Tony, the regret cloys thick in his lungs again, sending him reeling with all the weight of promises broken.

Those days, Tony will fly the armor, higher and higher until it strains its limits, no matter that the more he flies, the faster the poison crawls through his blood. 

But he supposes that if he can survive with literal shrapnel clawing at his heart, he can survive the shrapnel of this love too.

Take deep breaths. Follow the rules.

Everything will work out the way it’s supposed to.

(Except, Tony’s never been quite good with rules.)

(Neither is Steve.)

* * *

“Is everything a joke to you?” Steve snaps.

The whirring of the helicarrier is a distant hum, barely noticeable beneath their tension. Tony takes out his packet of blueberries and offers it to Bruce first. It was vengefully childish, but if Steve apparently wanted to strike low blows, Tony wasn’t going to restrain himself.

“Funny things are,” Tony smiles.

And really, wasn’t his life the funniest joke there was? It kept pitting him back against Steve at the most inopportune moment, whether it was as fellow students or as a superhero and a former Army Captain.

Maybe this was how they were meant to fit, Steve on the other side of every argument.

“Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn’t funny,” he insists. Irritatingly polite as ever, Steve adds, “no offense, Bruce.”

“No, it’s fine. You know I wouldn’t have come here if I couldn’t handle Tony.”

Tony smirks, vindicated. “You need to strut, Bruce.”

“And _you_ need to focus on the problem, Tony,” Steve doubles down on his orders.

“You think I’m not?” Tony hurls the words back at him. He had _no right_ to tell Tony to do anything, not anymore, and not ever again. “Why did Fury call us and why now? I can’t do the equation unless I have all the variables.”

Something flickers in Steve’s eyes, hanging between reluctance and revelation, but the hard set to his jaw had loosened the tiniest bit, and Tony knew he had won this fight. Even if Steve didn’t always believe him, he had always had faith in Tony’s abilities.

That, at least, had never changed, no matter how hard they fought or how Tony felt about it.

Most days, he felt the bitter taste of possibilities lost. Now, he was grateful for it.

“You think Fury’s hiding something?” Steve rolls the words around, weighing them.

Tony nods sharply. “Aren’t we all?”

It was a petty jab at the web of lies Steve had built around them, the betrayal and shattered trust, but it was one that Tony knew would work in driving his point further home, tipping the scales in his favour.

Bruce glances uneasily between the two of them, the sudden silence jarring.

Then, Steve returns the nod, clearly reluctant.

“What’s your plan?”

“Blueberry?” Tony offers him instead, an olive branch to soften the blow.

But if Tony knew Steve, it was also true that Steve knew Tony, and he glared at him. “You hacked the mainframe, didn’t you?”

“And you’re planning to snoop in the armory,” Tony doesn’t miss a beat. “So take that frown away from me and aim it at someone else.”

Steve stares him down for another second before he heads to the door, not bothering to deny what they both know to be true.

“Don’t blow anything up before I come back.”

Tony glares at his retreating back. “Don’t give me a reason to!” he yells.

If Steve heard, he gave no indication, and Tony huffs unsatisfied, turning to Bruce. “Can you believe I nearly married that guy?”

Bruce shakes his head.

Then shrugs.

Then nods.

* * *

They meet because Steve receives a scholarship from the boarding school Howard banished Tony to. Tony thought it was the height of comedy: Howard wanted Tony to meet the higher ups of society, but a skinny little boy from Brooklyn comes along, with no money and no name and no fame.

Tony didn’t realise yet that the joke might actually be on _him_.

But Steve is fifteen and Tony is thirteen.

Steve is too angry for his own good and Tony is too smart for his own age, and when they meet in the autumn of 1983, they clash in the worst of ways.

“Stop making the gardener’s life harder,” Steve crosses his arms when he finds Tiberius, Sunset, and Tony pulling out flowers in the garden. This isn’t the first time he’s stood toe to toe against them.

If Tony were to be entirely honest, he enjoyed goading Steve into a fight because it felt nice to know that there was still someone who _cared_ enough to be angry. Howard and Obie made sure that Tony stayed close to Ty and far away from Steve, so while picking fights wasn’t the best way to befriend somebody, it _is_ the only way he can scout out whether Steve is worth the hassle of sneaking around.

It’s a burning curiosity that Tony can’t quell – the same fascination that he had when he poked a finger into the fireplace.

Except, now he doesn’t have Jarvis to quickly pull him away from the fire, and he stares wide-eyed as Steve crosses his arms stubbornly.

“Run along,” Ty tries to usher the smaller boy away. “This is none of your business.”

“Ruining other people’s lives just because you can shouldn’t be your business either,” Steve doesn’t budge an inch, standing between the flowerbeds and the trio.

The school’s ancient buildings tower over his scrawny form, making him look even smaller.

Tony wonders distantly whether normal people were as recklessly stubborn as Steve. At this point, Steve most likely believes that Tony is an _ass_ , which Jarvis says is honestly true. Except, Jarvis calls Tony that fondly, and Steve would most likely mean it in the rudest sense of the word.

Sunset cocks her head to one side. Most people would inch away at the sharpness of her smile.

Steve does not.

It’s a trend, a repeated experiment to confirm the consistency of the truth. Tony is, first and foremost, a scientist. He prods at things to figure out how they work. Sometimes, things blow up.

But he watches, he takes notes, lets the pieces of the puzzle fall together until he understands.

He stands aside as Sunset’s lips twist into a sneer. When she speaks, her tone is all prim and proper despite her words – their upbringing demands decorum, especially in hostility, and Sunset is nothing if not her parents’ perfect daughter.

“Steve, be a dear and get yourself a sandwich. I don’t know what your mother taught you about respect or feeding yourself.”

There are days that Tony wishes it were easier for him to be Howard’s perfect son. And there are days that his curiosity flares brighter than that. Today, as he sees something dangerous flash in Steve’s eyes, he finds that the curiosity wins.

“None of you know anything about feeding yourselves,” Steve snaps back without any polish, only pure rage and righteousness.

It’s fascinating as much as it’s infuriating, because it throws off the entirety of Tony’s findings on the other boy.

See, Tony’s notes go something like this:

  1. Steve is smart and talented. He must be to get a full ride scholarship to this school.
  2. Ridiculously stubborn. Has very loud opinions too.
  3. The school nurse who treated Tony’s scrapes after an unfortunate lab incident said Steve was the only other student as injury-prone as Tony. Tony takes that as a personal challenge to beat his record.
  4. Steve’s art must be amazing because the Headmaster had talked about it.
  5. Whenever Steve passes any of the staff in the halls, he will smile and greet them. Therefore, despite whatever upbringing kept Steve hopelessly skinny, he knew his manners and politeness.
  6. Tony has seen Steve carry a spider in a cup to release it into the wild. Steve must be kind. Or insane. Because _spiders_.
  7. Remember when Tony said Steve was smart? That needs revision. Because Steve is apparently a reckless idiot who has a death wish.



It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happens next.

Ty throws another insult at Steve, and Steve throws one right back. Sunset manages to stop them before any punches fly.

The flowers are forgotten, Tony has to bear with Ty’s angry mutterings for the rest of the week, but he finds that it’s an educational experience.

* * *

Tony thinks he should stop pushing, now, but Tony’s never been one to leave well enough alone.

And he’s always been drawn to the forbidden.

* * *

Steve is in the arts program, Tony in the science program. That means, most days, they don’t cross paths unless they intend to. The one possible room for them to meet unintentionally is the art studio, where the school’s grand piano is located alongside various easels for painting, where all students can spend their spare time practicing the boring arts of high society.

Tony has no patience staking out the studio.

“Who are you writing to?”

“How the _hell_ did you get in here?”

Steve scrambles to cover the papers on his desk. Tony steps closer to his chair.

Getting in wasn’t the hard part. Younger than everyone, Tony is small and growing thinner now that Jarvis can’t sneak pies onto his plate.

Besides, slipping through the hallways after curfew to get to Steve’s room is child’s play compared to sneaking into Howard’s workshop. Picking the lock is a little trickier, but nothing that can stop Tony, especially when he’s descended on a warpath for answers.

He adds two more lines to his list.

  1. Steve isn’t always polite. (He curses sometimes!)
  2. The room is boring. No décor. Nothing on the walls.



Then, Tony answers with his best attempt at innocence. “Through the door, of course.”

“Perfect,” Steve replies flatly. “Then you know the way _out_.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“Why are you here?”

Tony shrugs. He honestly doesn’t know.

Between Ty and Sunset being exhausting over their obsession about Teen Vogue’s latest issue – Tony doesn’t care if they’re featured on the covers or not – and Tony’s own abysmally lacking list about Steve’s behavioural anomalies, he supposes he’s here because he doesn’t know what Steve is up to, and the questions are slowly chipping away at his sanity.

Also, he’d like to clarify that he has no ill intentions. _That’s_ the hard part. And the longer Steve glares at him, the harder it feels.

“I feel like we should start over.” Diplomatic. Obie says being approachable is good. “I’m Tony Stark.”

Steve looks supremely unimpressed. “Yes, you’re Tony Stark. And just because you’re younger, smarter, richer than everyone, it doesn’t excuse you from acting callously to the staff or from _barging_ into my room.”

“Are you going to let me explain?”

“No.”

Well. Tony _had_ been expecting that answer. He’s also noticed, however, that Steve isn’t forcefully removing him from the room, which means that Steve doesn’t wholly want Tony to leave.

“Okay,” Tony easily says.

He walks over to the window and perches at its sill, taking the time to notice the smaller details that had escaped him. There was a sketch of a woman pinned to the wall next to Steve’s bed, and beside it, a crude drawing of a grinning, long-haired boy.

Beneath the pictures was a small stack of three well-worn books.

The walls themselves are plain. Above the customary wardrobe installed in each room is a small suitcase. Tony frowns at it for a bit, wondering how Steve had climbed to put it up there, and whether all of Steve’s belongings really could fit in such a small space.

Sneaking a glance outside the window, Tony finds himself peering out onto the moonlit woods secluding the school from the rest of the world. If Steve wanted to play this game of stubbornness, Tony was more than ready to out-stubborn him.

“This _is_ actually a pretty nice view here,” he amicably observes. “A bit quiet. I get a view of the front lawn. Do you think they’d let me switch rooms with you? It’d be a nice change.”

A few beats of silence pass. Steve breaks first, clearly disgruntled by his own impatience.

“Is everything a joke to you?”

His chin juts out defensively, growing more doubtful of Tony’s presence.

“Life’s easier when you’re laughing,” Tony says honestly.

He doesn’t understand why Howard or Obie frowned so much, but Ana and Jarvis were always happy. _A bright side to everything, young sir_ , Jarvis liked to remind him, distracting him from the echoing hallways of the mansion.

That doesn’t seem to be an acceptable answer for Steve. “Why do you suddenly care so much?”

“I don’t know you well,” Tony shrugs, pretending. Steve doesn’t like him, but Tony’s attended enough parties and been taught how to get others to talk. Gaze darting to the blank canvases, he asks an easier question. “You draw much?”

“Look,” Steve scowls, “I’m not interested in joining you and your group. You don’t need to pretend to care. You never have.”

That hurts more than it should have. But at least Steve isn’t kicking Tony out or reporting him. Yet.

“You’re smart,” Tony decides to do this bluntly if Steve won’t react to more diplomatic approaches. “You know going to this school is an opportunity of a lifetime. Why are you trying to get yourself kicked out?”

“What?”

“We both know you heard me perfectly fine.”

He meets Steve’s eyes head on, refusing to be intimidated. He realises, belatedly, that if he had wanted to befriend Steve, he shouldn’t antagonize him, maybe start with an actual apology. But Tony’s mind had jumped ahead several steps, and it was too late to back down now. 

“You wouldn’t understand.”

Tony huffs, annoyance returning to him. He didn’t keep Ty and Sunset away from Steve just to be belittled. “I’m a MENSA certified genius. Highest score ever. Why wouldn’t I understand?”

“Exactly because of what you just said.”

“Then enlighten me.”

“I don’t like bullies.”

Scoffing, Tony shakes his head. “There’re going to be bullies in any school you go to. Are you going to get yourself kicked out of _all_ schools?”

“Doesn’t matter. Bullying is wrong.”

Jarvis and Aunt Peggy had said that too, Tony considered the answer, but it made no sense. The variables weren’t all there yet.

“Not why you’re trying to get yourself kicked out of here, though,” he tries to steer them back to the question at hand. “You have no friends here. Your books are barely unpacked. You’ve decided you’re not here to stay.”

“I have no friends because _your_ friends made sure everyone stayed away from me,” Steve challenges, “and my books aren’t unpacked. Those are the _only_ books I have.”

“Doesn’t the scholarship give you pocket money?”

“I’m saving it,” Steve defiantly replies, almost daring Tony to mock him.

The concept of saving money was foreign to Tony, but Tony _did_ hoard the spare parts he could squirrel away from Howard’s lab. One day he would have enough to build himself a small robot to help Jarvis make the morning juice.

Did Steve have a Jarvis he wanted to give something to?

Tony wouldn’t mock anyone for that. “What are you saving up for?”

“Again, why do you suddenly care so much?”

He gives a non-committal shrug. “You seem nice. And less boring than Sunset’s magazines.”

“And that’s a perfectly sound reason to barge into a stranger’s room,” Steve dryly observes.

“You’re not a stranger. I know at least nine things about you.”

Steve sighs, but his lips twitch up in reluctant amusement. “Do I want to know what you know?”

It feels like a victory. A small nudge of progress that adds three more items to Tony’s list.

Giving Steve a self-satisfied grin, he shakes his head. No. Steve wouldn’t really want to befriend Tony if he knew that Tony thought he could be stupidly reckless.

And, Tony realises with a sudden excitement, he does want Steve to befriend him.

* * *

Steve has a system of rules.

Or several, to be exact. They’ve changed over the course of time, but at fifteen, in a school he loves to hate, he has three most important rules.

First, try his best not to punch anyone. _We can’t afford the lawsuit, Stevie_ , his Ma had said, _so make sure if you have to punch someone, they really needed the punch_.

Second, try his best not to get attached. He’ll get out of the school soon enough, join the Army together with Bucky. The scholarship was only helpful to help lighten his Ma’s load. Becoming attached would only make his departure more difficult.

Besides, staying unattached wasn’t particularly hard to do. Nobody was interested in Steve’s non-existent networks or wealth, nor was Steve interested in wasting his money and time attempting to gain their favors. Steve prefers his life. An honest one, simple and warm, without any of the lies that seeped deep in the walls of this school.

Third, avoid Tony Stark at all costs.

It isn’t a rule born from spite, but from calculated caution. Steve was a year younger than everyone by virtue of his love for books. When his Ma spent long hours at the hospital, he’d go to the public library, do his homework there together with Bucky. It kept their costs low, and kept Steve out of backalleys where he was prone to picking fights.

But Tony, younger than even him, was the star of the school. Everyone flocked to the richest heir, even if Tony seemed to be content to stick with Tiberius Stone and Sunset Bain, uninterested in anyone else’s approaches.

If Steve so much as _looked_ at Tony wrong, he could have an army of lawyers storming his Ma’s apartment.

Tony was dangerous, forbidden.

He considers the other boy from across the dining hall. He had piled Tony into the same boxes that he had put Tiberius and Sunset in, and yet, in the scant few months he had been in this hell of a place, Steve had found Tony to be simultaneously louder and quieter than all the rest.

And since their conversation last night, Steve wonders if any of them really knew the Tony to Tony Stark. He spots Tony barely eating, his hands busy with something. Sunset was prodding him about something, her smile turning sharp when Tony barely minded her.

Steve thinks that maybe, if Tony weren’t so forbidden, they might have become friends. Two people, uninterested in the wiles of the spoiled like her.

As it was, however, Steve looked away from him, turning back to his lonely plate. Seven more months, and he’d get to go back home for the summer holidays.

Bucky and his Ma, the busy streets of the city. No empty silences or other boys sneaking into his room.

That was something to hold onto.

Steve tried his best to hold tight.

* * *

“You didn’t answer me last week.”

“Jesus _Christ_ ,” Steve curses, nearly knocking some books over. “How did you even know I was here?”

The library was supposed to be his haven. Few people cared enough to spend their free afternoons here. They much preferred the swimming pool, or a trip to the nearby town.

“I go here when Ty is being stupid. I like the light,” Tony leans against one of the stone pillars, the roof arching above him. “Why are you still trying to get yourself kicked out?”

“Can’t you leave me to my own business?” Steve sighs. He _really_ would like to keep his third rule intact. Confronting Tony about the flowers was a mistake – he had thought that it was only Tiberius and Sunset – and now he was paying for that mistake.

“Not really. The nurse told me you got into a scrape with Nancy.”

As if reminded, the bruise on Steve’s rib throbs again. “I didn’t do anything,” he scowls. “She punched me.”

“Because you had a very riveting discussion about her parents’ privilege?”

“She shouldn’t have insulted my upbringing or my Ma like that.”

“What’s your mother like?”

Steve crosses his arms. Tony should have a hundred better things to do than attempting to drive Steve into madness. “Why aren’t you outside?”

“My mother likes playing the piano. She taught me. Howard thinks it’s unfitting for a man, but Obie said something about the coordination skills being good.”

The slew of names pricks at all of Steve’s questions about Tony Stark. The way his voice hardened over his father’s name, softened at whoever Obie was.

“Are you going to stay here until I answer?”

The answer is simple. Determined. “Yes.”

Steve sighs. “Then let’s at least sit.”

* * *

It doesn’t take long for Tony to realise that Steve is as stubborn as him, and perhaps as smart too, in different ways. Tony starts making excuses to slip into the library, starts bringing his blueprints along when he sneaks into Steve’s room.

Sunset often tries to peek at Tony’s work. Steve only crooks a judgemental brow and returns to his own art. It almost grows familiar, the silence of it, and Tony will reach Steve’s door only to find it unlocked.

“You’re not going to stop coming over, are you?” he finally asks one night.

Tony isn’t sure what finally broke through Steve’s stubbornness, but he grins, victorious and wry. “Not until you answer my question.”

“Fine. If I answer your question, will you answer mine?”

A fair deal. “Sure.”

“I don’t like being this far from home,” Steve admits.

He thinks of baking with Jarvis, and gardening with Ana. Of taking apart the washing machine and putting it back together again before anyone comes home. He guesses Steve doesn’t do any that. “What’s it – what’s it like? At your house?”

“Nothing much. We don’t have any of this,” Steve waves at his bedroom. “But there’s my Ma and Bucky. We used to sneak to Coney Island together, hitch a ride on one of the rollercoasters. He’d scream and we’d try to win something to bring home for his sisters.”

Tony tries to imagine it. Ty would never agree to anything like that. “That actually sounds nice. Do you need my help kicking you out of this place?”

Steve laughs. “No. Ma wants me here, and I don’t want her to pay for my school on top of everything.”

The words hang between them, a chasm of differences Tony’s only beginning to realise. It should have been the first hint that they wouldn’t work, but they’re both young, and Tony leaps easily across the first cracks, eager, curious, innocent.

“That’s very kind of you.”

“Your turn,” Steve shrugs the compliment away. “Why are you friends with Tiberius and Sunset?”

It sends Tony reeling. He had readied himself for a harder question, an interrogation into every corner of his life, like the reporters with their cameras liked to do. This felt too simple. A trap.

“Their parents are my parents’ friends,” he answers warily.

“So?” Steve asks, cocking his head to one side, “I asked why, not who they are.”

“Well their parents are friends of my parents,” Tony parrots again, confused. He didn’t really have a choice, did he? They were meant to be allies, heirs to fortunes and businesses. It was only logical that they start their alliance now.

Steve gives that a long thought. In the end, he accepts it. “Will my Ma have to be friends with your parents?”

Tony tries to imagine it: the gentle woman in Steve’s sketches being handed a tumbler of whiskey from Howard. He can’t, and he shouldn’t. Because Tony is supposed to be mingling with anyone other than this scrawny boy from Brooklyn.

 _We’re new money, Tony. The old money, they have wealth to rule half the world_ , Obie had said, _and you’ll meet them here_.

But Tony never wanted the world. Tony wanted the stars above. Wanted to know what it felt like to ride a roller coaster, to fly, to _soar_.

“No,” Tony tells Steve, sealing this secret from the rest of the world, “no. She doesn’t have to.”

Howard doesn't need to know.

* * *

Tony starts spending two evenings a week tucked in Steve’s dorm room. Wednesdays and Saturdays are the usual schedule. If it happens to coincide with Sunset’s abysmal piano practice sessions, well. Nobody can blame Tony for wanting to escape the harsh tunelessness of her attempts at playing waltzes.

Most nights, Steve ignores him, staring hard at the blank canvases slowly filling up. The quiet of the room is a calming respite from the inane chatter of Sunset and her other friends. Tony had always liked being alone, tinkering with things quietly, away from the spotlight that Sunset craved and Ty hoarded.

The quiet also helps Tony talk, almost like he’s in the laundry room next to Jarvis, rambling on about his thoughts without any fear that he’d be told to be silent.

Steve says he finds the noise calming. He hadn’t been used to the eerie silence of the large halls, and Tony finds safe harbour in the echo of his own dislike for empty halls. 

Slowly, Tony learns of Steve's inhaler, his arrhythmia and why he had been so spooked by Tony's arrival in the library. Tony took care to announce his presence louder, and if he whizzed through several bookshelves of medical books to spot the symptoms which meant he had to drag Steve off to the nurse, then, well. He was being a good friend.

"I'm _fine_ ," Steve liked to insist, "just let me lie down."

"The last time I said I was fine," Tony put his hands on his hip, equally adamant, "you forced me to get patched up too."

"You came in my room with soot still clinging in your hair!"

" _You_ are wheezing right now, and if you died on me, I'd be a suspect. So let's keep me out of jail," Tony would push Steve out the door anyway.

And there are evenings where time will tick away quickly, slipping between their fingers until Steve finds Tony slumped asleep on the bed, surrounded by sketches of messy blueprints. Unlike Steve's cautious lines, erased and drawn and erased again, Tony's strokes have a boldness to them, a deep-seated surety, and Steve will spare a second to wonder at all the brilliance he doesn't understand before he collects the papers and moves them to his desk.

Then, he'll squeeze his small body into the bed next to Tony, pull the blankets over them and think of home, squished together beside Bucky, huddling for warmth in the winter.

Except now, the warmth he huddles for is against a different cold - the creeping chill of loneliness he'd never noticed until Tony had come along, firebright and determined. 

Other nights, Steve will tell stories about how he and Bucky had pranked a particularly unpleasant schoolteacher with a mix of grease and feathers, Tony's muffled laughs filling up the room. They never meet anywhere else, Tony had admitted quietly that Ty and Sunset wouldn't take too kindly to seeing Tony with Steve, and when Steve had offered to punch them for him, he had smiled wide, shaking his head. _They're not worth your future, Steve_.

Steve had wanted to say that they were bullies and it was damn well worth Tony's happiness, but he swallows down the words, uneasy at how they jolted him out of his trance. Because he's broken two of his own rules already. He had those rules for a _reason_.

If Tony knew, he would laugh at Steve. _Rules are meant to be tested and broken_ , he'd grin even as he broke another law of physics.

If Buck knew, he would laugh at Steve, too. _You never could do things by halves, Stevie._

And if his Ma knew, she'd invite Tony in the house.

* * *

Tony doesn't know what changed that he finds himself trusting Steve. Maybe it's the winter snows that have finally come, blanketing the landscape in white. Everything seems stopped in time, a stillness hanging in the background as everyone rushes to study for their exams. Steve goes studiously through his books despite never missing a question when Tony quizzes him, and it's one of those nights, surrounded by textbooks about the long history of art, that Tony finds his courage.

“The flowers were, uh, Ty and Sunset don’t know, but I was weeding out the bad stalks,” he confesses. “They thought I was ruining the garden so they wanted to help.”

All he gets is a strange look from Steve. He _knows_ he isn’t supposed to do that. Howard had said it was far below his station. Even Obie agreed. But he had always loved tending to the flowers with Ana, watching something bloom into life under his care.

He thought Steve would understand.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Tony asks, ready to strike back against whatever mockery might come.

When Steve answers, his words are more question than statement. “I caught you trying to help out in the kitchens during our first week here.”

Tony freezes. He hadn’t thought he’d been noticed. “Please don’t tell anyone.”

“Why not?”

“My parents wouldn’t be too happy.”

“Well, your parents are wrong.”

“You should tell them that,” Tony mutters.

“I will, when I get to meet them.”

He should have known that Steve would rise up to that challenge. It wouldn’t end well in any universe. He can imagine Steve standing firm against Howard, achieving nothing except making him angrier at Tony, and likely ruining Steve’s life for the audacity.

And yet, it was nice to know that he had someone in his corner, who _would_ do that for him.

He revises his list. Maybe it wasn’t reckless foolishness, after all. There were other words to describe Steve now, swirling carefully at the edge of his thoughts: courage, loyalty, honor. 

“That would _definitely_ work in kicking you out of here,” Tony points out, half joking, half worried. He doesn’t want Steve to leave, not when Tony’s only just found him.

Steve laughs. “If I have to hear _one_ more person talk about the latest Versace, I might burn this place down.”

Tony can't help the laugh that bubbles out of him too.

“I _do_ love explosions.”

* * *

“I heard you’re staying over for Christmas,” Tony says accusingly as he flings open Steve’s door. “Didn’t you want to get _out_ of this place?”

“Ma can’t afford to send me home for Christmas,” Steve replies, eyes fixed on his books, studiously avoiding Tony.

“But you live in Brooklyn.”

“And we’re miles away from there.”

Rolling his eyes, Tony explains. “I go back to Manhattan. You can come with us. Meet Jarvis.”

Only then does Steve look up. “I couldn’t possibly.”

“Jarvis wants to meet you,” Tony adds, hoping to change his mind.

“I wouldn’t want to impose.”

Tony scoffs. “You’ve never been scared of imposing.”

* * *

“You must be Tony,” Sarah pulls him into a hug when they drop Steve off at the stairs of an old Brooklyn building, “thank you for your kindness, Mr. Jarvis. It means a lot to have Steve home for Christmas.”

“It was the least I could do,” Jarvis answers. “My young sir writes often of how your son makes him smile.”

Tony sneaks a glance at Steve, unsure how he would take it knowing that Tony wrote home so much about him.

“Ah, but I feel I know Tony well from Steve’s letters home, too. You _must_ stay for a bite of biscuit.”

Softly, Steve clears his throat, nudging Tony’s ribs until Tony ignores the adults talking and turns around. That isn’t proper decorum, but he doubts that Sarah cares.

“What?” Tony asks.

Steve smiles. “Do you think you can come over some time? Bucky wants to meet you, too.”

“Bucky knows about me?”

“You’re both my friends. Of course he knows about you.”

The words settle in Tony, bright and warm. _Friends_. He had never felt this easy with Ty and Sunset.

“I’ll try my best,” Tony promises. There’s barely any chance he’ll actually be able to come. Christmas means parties at the mansion, Obie asking about his latest designs, and Tony standing perfectly poised in a suit.

Spending time with Steve was much less boring. Already, he was thinking of ways to get around them all.

“Thank you for the ride home,” Steve says again

“You’re welcome.”

“Come on, you’ll love Ma’s cookies,” Steve tugs at Tony’s hand.

Tony lets himself be pulled away.

* * *

The holidays are boring without Steve, but he's missed Jarvis long enough that the days pass by quickly enough. He bakes a cake with Jarvis and plucks some of Ana's flowers to send over to the Rogers' household - after Jarvis had kindly reminded Tony that buying them a new house without a discussion wouldn't be a very acceptable gift.

He gets a letter in return, although the more correct term would be a short diary. Thin, looping handwriting scrawled on pages and pages of old, yellowed paper, sending Tony cackling about Steve's latest adventures.

“You shouldn’t be so distracted,” Obie chides him when he stays in his room all week, trying to come up with a fitting reply to the letter. Then, Obie presents him with an early Christmas gift: new tools that Howard had forbidden, tools that Obie had persuaded to be allowed.

“Obie! How'd you know I wanted - ”

"You can thank me by putting that brain of yours to use. Who's writing to you?"

Tony quickly smothers his smile. "No one. A professor from MIT," he lies smoothly. He doesn't like lying to Obie, doesn't usually have to, but he knows _this_ sort of thing would get back to Howard.

"Good," Obie nods slowly, "good. You're going to surpass us all one day, my boy, and you need to keep your eye on the focus."

"Yes, Obie," Tony says, guilt roiling with pride. He didn't want to disappoint Obie, not when the man had placed so much faith on him. "Thank you for the tools." 

When Christmas rolls around, Tony smiles at all the right times for Howard and the business partners. He meets Ty and Sunset at the party and pointedly shows everyone how close they've become since starting school together. His mother presses a kiss on his cheek. He dances with her, relishing the small smile she gives him at the end of it when he bows. All the while, he holds his breath, counting how many glasses have passed through Howard's hands, only sighing in relief when the night ends without incident.

The next morning, Jarvis makes him his favorite pie as a gift, and sneaks him a burger for lunch.

It's a good Christmas. Better than the last. And if Tony feels upset at not being given the slightest acknowledgement from Howard, then he locks his bedroom and opens up the pages Steve sent. _I wish you were here,_ Steve had written, _Ma won't stop asking about you._

Tony tries to work on a phone for Steve, but Obie finds him again and hands him some of Howard's blueprints. "Your father doesn't know about this. He's getting old, and we need someone new. Now, look, I know you're young. I also know you're smart enough for this."

"They're rockets," Tony pieces the shapes together, taking them apart, putting them back together. "You're letting me design for the company?"

Obie smiles wide. "You've always been smart, my boy. You can make them better?"

The holidays pass faster after he throws himself into work. Obie asks whether Tony made any improvements to the rockets, Tony comes up with rockets stronger than Howard could ever make them.

Better, faster, cheaper. Tony forces himself to the brink, until all he can see is the sprawling, curving lines of his designs, looping around itself, again and again, a circle no one can break.

* * *

Inevitably, the winter holiday ends, and Tony rushes to finish the phone in the car as they pick Steve up from Brooklyn. It's lucky that he does, because after Sarah Rogers smothers Tony with warm tight hugs and hands them a fresh bag of cookies, Steve slips into the car with red ears and a drawing. 

The lines are rough, imperfect, the artist still learning how to capture light, but Tony knows it must have taken hours, and he doesn't think his photographs could compare to it. _You always liked my drawings_ , Steve had blushed an even deeper crimson, _I thought you'd like this._

They settle into a new friendship afterwards. This time, Tony isn’t the only one to seek Steve out. Steve will find Tony in the library, or the piano room. And they’ll sit with each other, Steve’s hands streaked with paint, Tony's with grease.

It becomes harder to keep his other friends away from Steve, and yet, the extra hours of companionship are more than worth it.

Tony turns fourteen and he doesn’t tell anyone. Ty and Sunset forget. Steve doesn’t know. Jarvis sends him a letter and a bag of cookies.

He shares the cookies with Steve, and he’s grateful for the quiet acceptance.

Next year, maybe, he’ll tell Steve.

* * *

The summer, however, brings change. Howard is a whirlwind of chaos beside Maria's thin-lipped silence and Obie's jittery uneasiness. The military was shifting, the public opinion shifted here and there until the company's stocks took a hit. Howard wants _more_ but cannot think of better. A young man enters the mansion, calling himself Fury, and Aunt Peggy makes a rare appearance.

"There will never be an end to fighting," she explains in that roundabout way of hers, pushing Tony's mind to work, "men, always dissatisfied," she tutts. "Food and cheer and good company, that's the real treasure, not the gold they keep trying to win."

He mulls her words over in his head, thinking of Sunset's frown as she tries on her hundredth dress and the warmth of Sarah Rogers' hug. Thinks of how much easier the world would be if - if there was truly an end to all the fighting.

“I have an idea for a cleaner source of energy,” Tony confides to Obie one afternoon. He has other ideas, too: medical technology, crop farming, space exploration.

“Can it power the rockets?”

“I don’t want to make weapons," Tony tilts his chin up, trying to figure out how Steve summoned his reckless courage. "That isn’t – we can do more. End the war for fuel. Make it cheap for anyone to make anything.”

It’s a dream that feels real. Tony is buzzing with it. A new world without bloodshed, without hunger, without death. Nobody needed to suffer like Steve did everyday, he could finally make something _meaningful_. Everything laid out at the tips of the fingers, the vision tantalisingly close, waiting only for the right tools. He can do it, he _knows_ he can –

“We don’t do energy,” Obie says with a harsh finality. “We make weapons. Protect Americans by having the bigger stick.”

“Yes, but – ”

“No. Tony, your father wouldn’t be happy to know that you’re wasting your time on the hippies. You’re young and impressionable. When you’re older, you’ll understand that this is how we’ve always done business, how we’ll always do it.”

Tony is fourteen and a half. He isn’t stupid.

“Obie, this will change the world,” he tries again, because surely Obie would understand. “This could save lives, not end them.”

“You think our weapons don’t save lives?” Obie’s tone turns dark despite his smile. “Tony, all those American soldiers, they come home because of you. If you waste your time on some hippie project, they stop coming home.”

 _What about the soldiers on the other end of the weapons?_ Tony wants to push, disappointment mingled with desperation and stubbornness. But he doesn’t want to anger Howard or Obie. Things were hard enough without them being unhappy about Tony, too.

And if he wants to keep tinkering, he has to keep them happy.

“I have some other ideas,” Tony begins slowly.

“Good, good. I’m proud. You’re way ahead of everyone already, Tony, but you can’t let yourself settle for less. You need to push for more, stay on top of the game. It’s a vicious world, and your father says Stark men are iron.”

 _It doesn’t have to be vicious_ , Tony wants to say, _and iron is brittle._

But he’s said enough already. 

* * *

Tony doesn’t spend the summer meeting Steve.

“I’m sorry I can’t meet Bucky,” Tony mumbles into the phone. Someday soon, Tony was going to invent a better, slimmer, smarter phone that could be snuck around anywhere, so he could call Steve any time without worrying that anyone else would discover this. Someday soon, he'd make a better phone for Steve.

“That’s alright,” Steve says, unable to quite hide his disappointment. “Ma sends her love.”

Tony wonders if his life will always be a choice between disappointing Steve and disappointing his family.

 _Stark men are made of iron_ , Tony tries to repeat to himself, hollow and false. On the other end of the line, Steve is talking again, asking questions about what new flowers Tony planted in the garden.

He thinks of his weapons firing away, gunshots ringing loud with death, and he pushes against the bile that rises up.

“Tell me what you did today,” Tony demands instead.

The cheer in Steve’s voice helps, but the bile lingers.

* * *

It’s a cloudy night when Tony finally admits it to Steve, the churning pit in his stomach. The pool of horror slowly growing larger in him.

He’s trying to play the piano, but the notes slip and slide away from him until Steve puts down his paintbrush to sit next to him on the piano bench.

“I’m pretty sure Beethoven shouldn’t sound like a dying cat,” Steve prods carefully.

“This isn’t even Beethoven.”

Steve shrugs. Their shoulders bump against each other. “Still. You can talk to me if you want to. Or we could just sit here and I could find ear plugs.”

Tony’s lips twitch up reluctantly. “That _did_ sound like a dying cat.”

“Are you admitting I’m right?” Steve teases gently. He doesn’t expect an answer, so Tony doesn’t give one.

The paint splatters on Steve’s hands are bright. A spot of green, a splash of yellow, drying up as Steve twists his hands together. Tony wonders what colors his own hands would be – drenched with red or covered with grey ash?

“I don’t want to make weapons,” he admits softly. He’s fourteen, and he just created a missile that Obie said would kill people better.

Steve’s blue eyes find his, piercing and searching. “Then do something else. You like playing the piano. Be a musician. Or an astronaut,” he pauses, considering. “Or a florist.”

Scoffing, Tony presses hard on a random note. It rings loud, lonely.

“Howard would never let me.”

“You can be anything you want.”

“And if I don’t want to be anything?” Tony asks, the precipice looming. If he wasn’t born a Stark, how different would his life have been? He could be running with Steve through the city, trying to win teddy bears and relishing the thrill of rollercoasters, or staying late in libraries, dreaming up stories of other lands better than this. “I want to do normal things.”

It must sound childish, entitled. All his money, his fame, his genius, couldn’t Tony be happy with what he had?

He waits for Steve to lecture him in righteous anger. To talk about gratefulness.

Nothing.

Until Steve takes Tony’s hands gently off the piano, wrapping his paint-splattered hands around the new calluses on Tony’s fingers.

“Come on, then,” Steve stands up.

“What?”

The blue of Steve’s eyes shine brighter in mischief. “We’re going climb the roof.”

“What if we fall?”

“Consider it a trust exercise.”

In Tony’s very informed opinion, Steve was far too calm about this.

“Steve,” he tries to reason. “I can’t, we can’t, what if we get caught – ”

“There’s nothing you can’t do,” Steve repeats, “and no one – not your father, not this school’s stupid rules, not the reporter’s camera – can stop you.”

The conviction, the utter faith laced deep in each word should terrify Tony. He’s had people believe in him before, but never like this. Steve saw him as _Tony_ first before _Stark_. His mind drifts to Ty and Sunset, who was in his room, their heads bent over the latest magazines.

Then, his gaze lands back on his hands, still securely held between Steve’s.

“Stop that,” Tony forces the words past the sudden tightness of his throat, “I’ll start to think you really mean it.”

Steve’s smile grows wider. “We’ll drop by the kitchens, steal a pie or two.”

“I think you’re just hungry.”

“And I think you’re going to enjoy this.”

* * *

Their last year together at the school, Tony feels the time ticking away faster than ever. He wants to go to MIT, meet professors who might actually have a hope of understanding him, and yet, he doesn’t want this to end.

Fear flashes bright. _Come with me to Boston_ , Tony wants to tell Steve. _We can be friends there, too_.

It’s selfish, though, and Tony tries to stay silent, relishing the stolen moments of freedom he gets.

* * *

On Tony’s fifteenth birthday, Tony takes them back to the roof of the highest tower. The slanted red tiles are warm even in the darkness, sun-kissed from the early summer.

Ty doesn’t know, neither does Howard or Obie. Steve is _Tony’s_ , and whatever else they might say about him, Tony doesn’t want to hear what they might say about his friendship.

So he tucks the two of them away where nobody can see them, this secret he wraps carefully in his heart. No one will ever be able to use it against them, Tony promises.

No one, that is, except for themselves.

* * *

It goes like this: Tony is sprawled on Steve’s bed, his blueprints scattered across the sheets, and Steve sits at his table, not reading his book.

“I’m going to enlist,” he confesses.

“You’re what?”

The cogs of Tony’s mind scramble to understand. _Enlist_ and _Steve_ weren’t two words that Tony ever expected to go together. Steve was righteous, yes, but holding a weapon was different from punching a bully.

“Bucky’s applying to the Army. I can’t let him go alone.”

“Tell Bucky not to go, then,” Tony pleads, already half begging. The blueprints in his hands have never felt more useless, meaningless, and he sits up on the bed, back tense with panic.

“There are men laying down their lives. We have no right to do anything less.”

 _Let them_ , is Tony’s first thought, _let them. As long as it isn’t you_. That would do no good to convince Steve, though, and Tony turns to something else.

“What about your Ma?” he tries desperately, because Steve was going to _war_. Didn’t he know how much Tony hated the war? The bloodshed, the injuries, the death. “Steve, you’re a skinny artist from Brooklyn. You can’t paint others into submission.”

He hopes the words sting as much as the thought of Steve leaving stings Tony.

A flash in Steve’s eyes, dangerous and hurt. And suddenly, Tony regrets his words. Pushing Steve away wouldn’t help. Challenging Steve wouldn’t either. He would only grow more resolved.

“There’s an experimental division of the Army.” Steve’s chin juts out stubbornly, endearing and infuriating all at once. “They’ve accepted me.”

Each word comes as a blow, a finality feeding the gnawing pit of Tony’s fears, turning them to anger. “When did you know?” he demands.

“The letter came last week.”

“ _Damn you_ ,” Tony curses him. The anger only serves to make the hurt burn fiercer. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Steve’s eyes dart down, no longer meeting Tony’s gaze. “It wouldn’t have mattered to you.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered to _me?_ ”

“We’re both young,” Steve shakes his head. “And you have the entire world. You’ll forget about me soon enough.”

That wasn’t fair. Did Steve really think so little of Tony? Was all this just a fun game for Steve, meant to be forgotten? The questions pile up until all Tony can think of is: “How can you _say_ that?”

“How can I not?” Steve shrugs. “You told me you came here because you were bored. Your parents don’t know that I exist.”

“Because they’d _ruin_ you if they knew,” Tony defends himself. It was true that Tony had come here because he was curious and bored, but he stayed because they were supposed to be _friends_.

“You’ve never needed me,” Steve cuts him with the truth.

"I never _needed_ you?" his voice rises higher. Of all the things Steve could have said, of all - Tony wants to slam something, to throw something at him. Because how _dare_ he say that? How dare -

Steve stands, walking towards the bed. Carefully, he shifts the blueprints around, making space for himself beside Tony. A kindness bordering on cruelty.

“We’re both young,” he tries to comfort Tony, “you’ll find other people.”

“And _you’ll_ find other people,” Tony spits back.

“I promise I’ll write to you.”

Tony didn’t want letters. He wanted Steve, but Steve didn’t want him. Hadn't wanted him in the first place.

Didn't Steve tell Tony that he barely liked anyone in the school? In the end, Tony was a friend Steve never needed either.

“Don’t bother," he bites out. "You didn’t bother telling me about this.”

“I’m telling you now.”

The tone he used – ridiculously reasonable – was too much to bear, and Tony snaps.

“Did you even _care_ about me?”

“You know I do,” Steve whispers softly. “You’re my closest friend.”

“Not close enough to deserve the truth,” Tony scoffs, standing up and walking to the door. He doesn’t care about the blueprints left behind, he just needs to scream, to run, to break. “You must have planned this a long time ago, and you thought it wouldn’t _matter?_ My friend is going off to war, of course it matters!”

“Tony – ”

“But apparently you think I’m heartless.” Tony thinks back on how Steve liked to dislike all the students of the school, thinks of Steve calling them dull and vain, thinks of how Steve must have talked about Tony like that too. “If you want me out of your life, there’s no need to lie to me. I’ll go.”

He wrenches the door open, not daring to look back. He doesn’t think he can bear seeing Steve for a second longer. Why hadn’t he just stayed with Ty and Sunset? At least he knew that they cared only for his money, at least he wouldn’t have been tricked to give away his secrets.

“Wait.”

He keeps walking, ignoring Steve.

“Please. _Tony_.”

_To-ny._

In the end, it was those two syllables that stopped him, leaving him with an aching emptiness.

He might never get to hear Steve say his name again, that gentle dip between the syllables, as if Steve cared enough to say them right. It’s stupid, utterly _foolish_ to clutch at the last bits of their friendship, but even in anger and hurt, he knew he’d regret it if he walked away.

Because he can already picture the weapons that will be used against Steve - and he feels sick to the core at the thought of Steve's thin arms holding up something larger than him, designed to injure, to kill.

“When will you be leaving?”

The question comes as fearful as it was bitter.

Part of Tony doesn’t want to know the answer, doesn’t want to know how much time Steve had decided to spare for Tony. A larger part _needs_ to know. The deadline to everything – his mind already ticking, searching for ways to fix, to solve.

While Steve might not have cared, Tony cared too much. It was one of the many things Howard found disappointing in Tony, the lack of ruthless salesmanship, and for once, Tony understands fully why it was easier, less hurtful to not care. And yet, it was too late.

Even if Tony did his best to forget about Steve, to cut all their ties in anger, there would always be the looming spectre of their friendship. That thought would haunt him too much, especially when every new weapon he created for the government's arsenal could be the difference between life and death.

Stopping Steve from going apparently wasn’t an option, but protecting him?

 _All those American soldiers,_ Obie had said, _they come home because of you._

“After graduation,” Steve confesses. _In a month_. “I'm sorry.”

There wasn’t time to spare, then. This was Tony's responsibility. Crude designs shape themselves in his head. Armored protection, shielding, weapons to fire from afar, better targeting systems, a phone to call. He doesn't know what he's doing.

He's never - he never wanted to make weapons, and yet, here he was, thinking of rockets that could power missiles. With a body as scrawny as Steve's, the only chance he would make it out through war was a miracle, or by having the bigger stick. It wasn't Steve's strength of resolve which sent Tony sick with worry - that had never been in question - but Tony had spent one too many visits to the nurse's office over the stutter of Steve's heart and the wheezing of his lungs. 

“You’ll still be stateside for a while?” Tony confirms.

“Yeah. It's the scientific research division. They want me for testing,” Steve lets out a shaky breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know how to tell you. You hate war.”

"I thought you hated bullying," he argues quietly, attempting to reconcile acceptance and betrayal and fear. He had known that their friendship couldn't last long, it was only logical, but he didn't want it to end like _this_.

Steve nods. "I do. But if there's a chance I can save lives by making this end faster, I'll take it."

Always righteous. Tony could never be as sure as Steve, could never shake off the largeness of Obie's hand on his shoulder or the doubts that lingered even after everyone tried to convince him otherwise.

"And what if we were wrong to go to war in the first place?"

"Then I can change things from inside."

"You can't punch an entire army of bullies, Steve."

"Watch me."

Tony laughs. Only Steve Rogers would dare. "I just might."

"I'll write to you," Steve promises again. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner."

"I wish you did. I wish - "

He trails off, and they stand silently across each other in the dim hallway. _I wish we could stay._

Steve nods, stepping closer. "I know. But you're going to the campus of your dreams, Tony. One day, I'll get to say _I told you so_ when you've changed the world and retired to be a florist."

He holds on to what little hope he can. "You wouldn't be able to stand the pollen, Rogers, much less reach me inside my flower palace."

"I'm sure I'll find a way."

"I don't doubt that. You're as bull-headed as they come."

"Says the genius who insisted on badgering me for three years."

"Don't act like you didn't enjoy it."

Steve grins in reply. Tony shakes his head. "You should go back to your rooms, Steve."

"Are you staying longer?"

He needs time to think, to process. "No. Ty and Sunset are waiting for me," he lies.

A shadow falls across Steve's eyes at the names. Nonetheless, he tries his best at giving Tony a smile. "Take care."

"You too."

Tony walks away.


	2. Steve - 1995

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ten years after he walks away from Tony, Steve comes home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've finally, finally managed to get this chapter and the plot in line after eons of debating with myself about how much politics and intrigue this story needed to explore, and all the rare interactions i wanted to pepper in, and that means i'll likely have a more regular update schedule too! hope you all enjoy it, and hope you're all doing well :)

Steve stares up at the impressive mansion, refusing to be daunted. There are numerous reasons to be nervous, to run and never go back, but the building isn’t one of them.

Despite all the Christmases driving from the school to the city with Tony and Jarvis, Steve had never been here, and he’s here only because Colonel Phillips had been willing to send a letter of introduction to the Starks.

Few people could pass the mansion’s gates without being questioned.

Compensating for the lack of grounds in the city, the mansion’s garden was small, the short pathway leading right up to the terraced entrance, its marble pillars imposing, the brown bricks distant instead of homely.

The part of Steve that can still ache hurts for Tony, and more pieces fall into place. Those questions he hadn’t been brave enough to ask were answered by the foreboding black door before him. 

It’s difficult to imagine a child growing up here.

Before Steve can knock, the door opens.

“Captain Rogers.”

Jarvis is as immaculately dressed as ever, red tie bright against his polished black suit. It sends Steve reeling to hear his name said in that calming British tone, but this time colder, more calculated.

When did he become Captain Rogers and not _Steve_?

He supposes he knows the answer to that, too.

“Mr. Jarvis,” he hopes forgiveness isn’t impossible. He's twenty seven, and yet he feels a ridiculous need to straighten his own shirt, the stern glare making his new body feel impossibly small. “Is Tony home?”

Whoever wrongs Tony also wrongs Edwin Jarvis. Steve isn’t any exception, especially when he had cut deeper than most.

“Both Mr. Starks are awaiting your arrival. The elder Mr. Stark is looking forward to meeting you.”

Jarvis’ ability to be perfectly cordial while absolutely reprimanding explained much about Tony’s deftness at quipping with perfect etiquette. But Jarvis’ withering glare was miles away from the slanted smile that Tony often had.

Steve looks down, unable to meet those knowing eyes. “Thank you,” he says. Whether it’s for the door or for taking care of Tony all these years, Steve can’t decide.

Regardless, it’s enough to make Jarvis relent. He steps aside from the door, letting Steve into the house.

Immediately, he’s greeted by a family portrait. A woman on a chair, her blonde hair tied into a bun, her painted rosy cheeks contrasting the pinch between her eyes. She’s flanked by two men, who needs no introduction.

The men have featured in so many of the newspaper clippings that Steve had hoarded in his ten years of service. He’s memorised the words on each of them, his newly enhanced memory capturing the precious few bits of news he’d managed to get during those months in the deserts.

Steve’s first thought is: _Tony doesn’t look like that_.

His second is more accusing: _you don’t know who Tony is anymore_.

It’s been a decade since he’s last spoken to Tony. He wonders if he can still call him a friend.

But the painting haunts him as Jarvis takes him through a winding maze of high-arching corridors, past countless carven doors and decorative tables with vases of wilting flowers – carnations on one table, wisterias in the other, Steve can hear an echo of Tony’s voice teaching him about the colors – and the occasional photograph accompanying those flowers.

Steve does his best not to sneak a glance at them.

The last time he had tried to draw Tony, he had been frustrated at his inability to properly capture the fervent wonder in Tony, the constant, jittery movement, the kindness in his measured hands.

Whoever had painted Tony standing still, they either did him a disgrace by keeping his face so blank of feeling, or the friend that Steve once knew had grown into someone else entirely.

Eventually, Jarvis opens a glass door that leads out to a private garden enclosed in the heart of the mansion.

At the center of the green space is –

A garden table.

Which was an understatement in many ways.

The tabletop was the finest marble, the ceramic was the rarest china, and the silverware set for three people.

And seated there was Howard Stark.

To his right was –

“Tony,” Steve couldn’t help blurting out.

 _God_ , he’s imagined this moment a million times before. He’s drafted a thousand more apologies in his mind.

None of them could prepare him for this.

Somehow, Tony’s cheeks were more gaunt than the photographs suggested. There were shadows beneath his eyes despite the straightness of his back.

Where Howard was dressed sharply in a clearly tailored suit, Tony hadn’t bothered.

Grease stained the plain shirt he was wearing, uncombed hair sticking out so familiarly that it sends an even stronger pang of – of guilt, grief, _memory_ that threatens to disarm Steve completely.

“Captain Rogers,” the real Howard Stark greets him, one hand extended. Jarvis stands frozen next to him, unprepared for the broken etiquette, and teetering on years of secrets. Howard frowns. “You know my son.”

More question than statement, Steve doesn’t let it sting as much as it used to. Better to be Tony’s dirty secret than something that could destroy him.

Taking Howard’s hand firmly, he nods. “We went to the same boarding school.”

“Oh really?" Tony says. "I thought you forgot about that.” His voice is scratchier and deeper than Steve remembered.

Howard’s jaw tightens. “He’s a Captain with a Medal of Honor, Anthony. A scientific masterpiece. Show him some respect.”

“ _Steve_ hasn’t made breakthroughs in quantum physics or nuclear power, has he?” Tony argues.

“And how _much_ did those breakthroughs cost us?”

Jarvis – bless him – interrupts the two men. “Would you like some apple pie, sirs?”

“Might as well,” Howard says.

“Certainly, sir.” With a small bow, Jarvis walks away, leaving behind a terse silence.

The stiffness in Tony’s shoulders, the way he gripped his fork tight enough to turn his knuckles white – they screamed at Steve to _do_ something.

He clears his throat. “I read that you made yourself a self-thinking bot, Tony?”

“Artificial intelligence,” Howard answers. “They’ll change the weapons industry forever. Keep our country safer than you did.”

“With all due respect, sir,” Steve bites out, “I think the best way to keep our country safe isn’t through war.”

“Idealism gets you nowhere, son.”

“And I don’t need you to fight my battles for me,” Tony growls. His fork clatters loud on the table. “If I want my technology to be used for something, I’ll do it myself.”

“ _Anthony_ , control yourself.”

“I will, when you stop drooling over the Captain.”

“He’s done more for this country than you have with your trinkets, you’d do well to be more like him.”

“Mr. Stark – ” Steve starts, but the loud scraping of wood against granite stops him.

Tony stands, fists clenched. “Then adopt him, for all I care.” His lips twist, sneering and upset all at once. “Make him your poster boy. Drape him in a flag. I’m _done_.”

He stalks away, and Steve wants to follow, to stop him from exiting his life again. He’s about to stand when –

“That boy,” Howard huffs. “He’s always been unruly. Wouldn’t have guessed you were educated in the same place.”

“Mr. Stark, Tony is an upstanding citizen, and he’s made very valuable strides into the future.”

Steve feels sick.

He knows that as a founder of SHIELD, Howard Stark is technically his boss. But he's also fairly certain that should Agent Carter get wind of what was happening to her godson, she would be on Steve's side.

“There’s no need to be polite, Captain. I know my son. He wouldn’t have made it out of the supersoldier program like you did,” Howard waves away his words, “you’re the only one of America’s best men strong enough for it.”

“With all due respect,” Steve shakes with the effort of controlling himself, “your son doesn’t need the serum to be great. And if you’ll excuse me, I’d very much like to find my friend.”

* * *

That’s easier said than done.

The mansion’s halls are unfriendly to new visitors, and Steve only manages not to get lost thanks to his improved senses. Following the scent of freshly-baked pie, he escapes Howard Stark to find the kitchen, where he hopes Jarvis might give a clue on how to find Tony, and how to make amends.

He can’t entirely regret leaving to join the Army, because if he hadn’t been on the battlefield next to Bucky, things would have gone much, much worse. 

And yet, Tony had been right.

Young as they both were, Tony had known even then that joining the Army wasn't the answer. The world wasn't as black and white as his commanding officers had tried to make him believe, and ultimately, it wasn't Steve who had paid for that naivete. 

Doctor Erskine had only been the first in a long list of innocents tied up in a violent war nobody was going to win.

This was the first step, Steve promised himself, to doing things right. 

SHIELD was the one to rescue Bucky from the brink of death, and they were independent. No government agendas, no politics. Just the good fight.

Of course, Steve wasn't foolish enough to believe that the people in SHIELD didn't have agendas of their own. Still, he'd trusted all the founders of the organisation.

Until he met Howard.

But Howard wasn't currently Steve's priority. It was Tony who mattered, Tony whose letters had stopped coming years ago, abruptly cutting any hope of reaching him.

He still kept all the letters that did reach him - envelopes marked with Tony's messy scrawl. They were neatly kept beside an even taller pile stamped with bright red letters long since dulled by dust and grime: _RETURN TO SENDER_.

The number of times he's reread Tony's words, desperately searching for a clue of _why,_ of what Steve had done to drive Tony away, had made Bucky roll his eyes.

And even if Tony never wanted to talk with Steve again after this, after the vitriol of their earlier meeting, he only needs to understand and perhaps have some modicum of closure.

Too late, he'd realised how much he took Tony's companionship for granted, until he'd stood guard in the desert sands all alone, without any gentle chatter or the bright tinkering of tools to break the monotony.

Rounding a corner, Steve walks decidedly past an empty piano room, and onwards until -

" - how can I not assume?" he hears Tony ask. "All these years, I've wondered, and now they're dining together?"

Steve isn't in the business of eavesdropping, but the serum meant he couldn't help it, and he feels his heart swooping down in dreadful expectation.

Purposefully, he loudens his footsteps, putting more weight in them than he was trained to do, hoping that his approach would be noticed.

Somebody clears their throat. A woman by the sounds of it.

The chatter stops.

When Steve enters the kitchen, he finds Tony and a red-haired lady sitting across him from the table. At the center of it, a deformed apple pie, clearly having been stabbed by a fork one too many times.

Tony blinks at him.

The lady stands up to extend a hand, her fingernails painted as red as her hair, her flowery dress an even more distant contrast to Tony's crumpled shirt.

"Captain Rogers, I presume?" Her voice is cheery and bright, Southern accent thick. This isn't Maria Stark. "I must apologise for not being dressed for the occasion," she continues, "I confess I didn't expect to meet you today."

"I, uh, I'm sorry for intruding," Steve says, stilted. "I was looking for Tony."

Finally, Tony stands up too. He shoves his hands in his pockets, chin tipped up. 

For all the world, he looks confident, undisturbed. To Steve, who has spent countless nights beside him, the nervousness is clear.

"This is Ana. Ana Jarvis," Tony says. "She taught me how to plant flowers."

Ana gives Steve's shoulders several pats. "I've heard a lot about you, but I _must_ go find my husband now." She takes the plate of apple pie with her. "Edwin's always so forgetful with the food."

Steve nods, quickly dodging out of the doorway. Remembering the new size of his body comes easier when he isn't this tense. Before Ana leaves, she places a quick peck on Tony's cheek, whispering, "you never told me he was _that_ handsome."

Tony reddens, and Steve feels his own face grow warm.

"So," Tony starts as soon as she leaves, "has my _esteemed_ father adopted you yet?"

Frowning, Steve shakes his head.

"Even if he did, I'd throw the papers in a fire." 

Tony snorts. "You're going to have to do better than that."

Always, Tony had a way of unbalancing him, of chipping away at his defenses, and Steve refuses to fall apart this time.

He has a goal, a plan. All he has to do is follow through.

"What do you mean?"

"Don't play _dumb._ It doesn't suit you, Rogers."

Steve feels his hackles rising, confusion crashing against indignant anger. What was Tony accusing him of?

"Don't put words in my mouth," he gives as good as he gets.

Tony marches towards him. "Ten years!" he snaps, shoving violently at Steve's chest. "Ten years and you waltz in here, on an invitation from Howard - and you _dare_ pretend to care? Tell me, how much is he paying you to report back to him?"

" _What?_ "

The last time Tony had been this close to him, they'd been teenagers, children who didn't know how much they had to lose. 

Spitfire and strength. 

That had been the Tony he knew, and _God,_ Steve stares down at Tony's face, unable to think.

It's been so long, Steve just misses his friend _so much_.

Tony turns away. "No letters, no news. What happened to your empty promises, _Captain?_ " he spits out. "Why did you stop writing? Howard must have told you to stop, and since Howard thinks the sun shines out of your ass, you must have listened."

That's... _Steve_ was the one who was supposed to be asking that. His hand shoots out to catch Tony's wrist before he could go any further.

" _I_ sent you letters. Every week. And they were sent back to me without explanation or any reply from _you!_ "

For a moment, Steve thinks it's enough, but the moment ends and Tony's lips twist again. "I don't care. I don't give a _damn_ who you sold your soul to for you to be _friends_ with Howard, but I'm not falling for your bullshit any longer."

"You've changed," Steve numbly says. His friend wasn't this bitter man.

Scoffing, Tony wrenches his hand out of Steve's grasp. " _I've_ changed? Says the man who literally took a serum to make himself _great_."

"I took the serum to protect the country!"

"And how did that go?"

The words slap. 

Steve knew that ten years was a lot of time for someone to change. And for God's sake, Tony was now _twenty five_. 

But some part of Steve had foolishly, ridiculously hoped that he could come home to the comfort of starbright dreams and the safety of companionship. 

Yes, he had Bucky, and now Sam, Natasha, Agent Carter - and yet, Tony had been his friend in a way that none of them could be. 

The two of them had been children wrapped up in a secret world, finding solace in knowing that they were both too different for everyone else to understand. More different than ever, Steve wishes he could go back to climbing rooftops with Tony, to simpler times without any gunshots ringing in his dreams or the taste of sand lingering between his breaths.

_How did that go?_

He can't find an answer.

"Thought so," Tony says in the silence. "You can see yourself out, and if you want tea parties with Howard, you can leave me the hell out of them."

Numb, Steve watches him leave.

* * *

Bucky finds him in his room. 

Sam is in the kitchen, most likely cobbling a dinner together. Despite Bucky's medical bills, they'd managed to collect enough for a flat in Brooklyn, allowing their mothers free reign over their childhood homes, and nighttime peace from the often violent effects of their nightmares.

"Hey," Bucky slowly sits down next to him, perching at the edge of the bed. "I haven't seen these in a long time."

Steve shrugs. 

He flips over to the next letter from the pile surrounding him. His looping cursive mingles with the blocky letters that even boarding school hadn't been able to train out of Tony. 

Beside them is their envelopes, peeled open carefully to preserve the different ways Tony had addressed him in the two years that they'd managed to keep their ill-fated correspondence.

 _Cadet Steven G. Rogers_ , one of the envelopes reads out, _aka the mouthiest of them all_. 

Another had simply read _To Steve Rogers, the insufferable one._

He thumbs carefully over the ink, uncomprehending. 

Then, he turns to his own letters, the ones that Tony had accused him of never writing, the ones that had come back to him after months of silence. 

_Tony, I wish you'd seen what Colonel Phillips made us do today. You'd probably laugh at me huffing and puffing through physical training, but Doctor Erskine's been injecting me with a serum that's letting me grow stronger ... I worry about you. This silence from you is driving me mad, which is driving Bucky mad too. Please remember to eat in between your inventing. Yesterday Bucky showed me a news article about you, and ..._

The words blur before him. 

He had been so _young_ when he'd written this, two years into his training in the Army, right at the cusp of Erskine's final serum that would tip him over the edge, turning him into a symbol, a shield, a weapon. 

He had kept writing letter after letter for three more years until the stack of returned letters had grown too large to maintain.

Occasionally, the few magazines from home would feature Tony with Ty and Sunset and a whole host of other celebrities Steve didn't care for. 

Other times, Tony would look more reserved posing with Howard Stark and Stark Industries' newest Chief Operating Officer, Obadiah Stane.

Day after day, Steve had felt increasingly ridiculous for hoping any reply would come. 

"Stevie?" Bucky tries again. "You okay?"

Shaking his head, Steve barely manages to keep his strength from crumpling the paper. "Tony wasn't - he didn't want anything to do with me."

"Does that mean I _still_ don't get to meet him?" Bucky teases. "All these years hearing about him, I might break down his door for you."

"We wouldn't be able to handle the lawsuit."

"Yeah, and he's Peggy's godson. I'm scared of Peggy. I think I could take Howard Stark, though."

The sting of guilt is sharper, because Steve has heard hushed whispers of what Joseph Rogers had been like before he left a pregnant Sarah behind to fight another war.

He wonders how differently he would have turned out if he had grown up with a father like Howard, and it strikes him again how cruel it had been for him to leave Tony alone.

But Steve had needed the Army's money to keep up with his medications, and his Ma's own treatment bills, and -

"Howard's _horrible_ ," Steve finds himself confessing, "I nearly took him on."

Bucky pats his back. " _That's_ the Steve Rogers I know. Stop moping around, be a little more stubborn. You told me that's what the Stark kid did to you."

Steve thinks it'd be easier to be more stubborn if they were still forced to see each other in the hallways everyday. He glances down at the mess of unsent letters, words he'd meant to tell his friend from a lifetime ago.

They don't have their dorm rooms anymore, or rooftops to climb. 

But he has entry into the Stark Household, and proof that whatever other crime it was that Tony had accused him of, Steve hadn't gone back on _this_ promise.

* * *

When Steve drops the thick bundle of letters at the Stark Mansion, he meets another man. 

Dressed in the blues of the Air Force, the man gives Steve a distinctly unimpressed look.

The man takes the bundle, frowning at the address beneath the _RETURN TO SENDER_ stamp.

"These are all for Tony?"

"Yes."

" _You're_ Steve Rogers? Captain America?"

Had Tony talked to this man about him? "Call me Steve, please."

"I'm Captain James Rhodes."

Steve shakes his hand. "Are you a friend of Tony's?"

"Tony is family."

It's clear what the words mean: Steve isn't welcome here. 

While it hurts, he's glad that at least Tony has someone who's clearly got his best interests at heart. He nods in understanding. "Could you tell him to at least not burn the letters before he reads them?"

"How do you know he wasn't the one to return them?"

There's a guarded lilt to Rhodes' voice, a sort of test that Steve hopes he'll pass.

"Because setting them on fire would be much more efficient - and fun - than returning them."

Rhodes actually laughs at that, soft and rueful, before he schools his expression back into his earlier fierce protectiveness. "I'll tell him you stopped by."

"Thank you, Captain."

* * *

The motions of finding a new life in New York are harder than Steve expected, especially now he has to let go of Tony again.

Three years going through Erskine's experiments, five in the deserts fighting wars they had no business fighting, and another two helping Bucky recover while signing up for Peggy's grassroots organisation, Steve hadn't had much time for himself in the past decade. 

Briefly, he had considered stopping everything and living a normal life, go to art school with the hefty sum the Army had paid him, spend his life with paint-splattered hands rather than blood-soaked ones.

But it had felt selfish, and when Bucky expressed the need to fight again to reclaim part of what he'd lost, Steve had thrown himself back into work. 

Admittedly, his time's not largely spent in the city.

Outside the Army, SHIELD gives him more flexibility. 

Instead of staging endless attacks on endless troops, he gets to go deeper. Steve is tasked with tracking down illegal shipments of weapons, which is busy enough to keep him distracted.

One day Steve is in Washington cleaning up in headquarters, the next he's halfway across the world. 

He gives Bucky a cookie that his Ma had packed for him, and then checks up on Natasha in the cockpit.

This is familiar.

Compartmentalize. Assess. Plan.

"You know, Jan from Accounting is still free if you need company," Nat grins. She flicks a switch. Ten minutes to location.

The inky black sea spreads out beneath them, the night a perfect cover for them to approach.

"Are you projecting your issues on me?" Steve smiles back. "If you really want company, Clint's always free."

Smirking, she smacks his arm. "Are you still hung up on the Stark kid?"

"He's hardly a kid. Only two years younger than us."

"I know. He designed the cloaking tech for this bird last year. Right around the time you joined us on active duty."

With any other person, Steve would dismiss it as coincidence. "What're you implying?"

Her grin turns more playful. "Your fault for not telling me about him. Do the mission right and I _might_ be persuaded to give you intel."

Steve goes to grab his helmet, shaking his head. Whatever it was, it could wait.

Compartmentalize.

"I'll leave the chute for you!"

"Don't you dare, punk," Bucky answers for her, but it's too late.

The ramp is opened, Steve has his shield, the wind whips his face, and -

He jumps.

* * *

The Lumerian Star is a formidable ship.

But not as formidable as them. Bucky's metal arm serves as another tool to use against the pirates, clunky and painful to wear but effective as a hunk of metal to smack people down. 

Calculating trajectory and speed and force comes easily now to Steve. He wonders dimly as he picks the shield up whether it was this thrilling in Tony's mind too, being able to count the world so precisely and bend it to his needs.

They make quick work of it all, subduing and questioning until they find their target.

"That's one hell of a stash," Bucky whistles. 

The vast hull of the ship is filled with unmarked crates of weapons.

"And a hell lot of paperwork to come, too," Steve sighs, cranking one wooden lid open.

Rows of missiles stare back at them.

He frowns. HammerTech was among the weapons they most often recovered from the black market, but _this_ couldn't possibly be theirs.

Too smooth and too sleek, these weapons were - Steve carefully shifts his flashlight.

"Are you seeing this?"

Bucky cranks open another crate. His eyes meet Steve's, the consequences adding up in his head too, and the questions of _how_ dancing at the edge of thought. " _No_."

"This is bad."

"Maybe I get to meet the Stark kid after all."

"Buck, we need to pack this up. Everything." The Stark Industries logo stares accusingly back at him. "These are top of the line. We can't let them disappear again. Whoever bought this much of it - whoever _sold_ this much - "

"We'll get to the bottom of it, Steve."

He thinks of the neat lines that had graced Tony's blueprints, of another lifetime when Tony had admitted _I don't want to make weapons_. 

How many of these were Tony's designs? 

Was Tony involved in this many weapons going on the black market?

He couldn't possibly be, but Steve had found that his friend wasn't the same person. And even if it _wasn't_ Tony, the thought of someone twisting the brilliance of Tony's mind into this -

It makes him sick.

 _Compartmentalize_.

"Alright," he nods. "Let's pack it up. This goes straight to Peggy, no one else."

Bucky lets the lid of the crate fall, a loud thud echoing the dark.

"Aye, Captain."

* * *

"Not now, Pep."

"If not now, then when?" Her heels click against the Mansion's marble floor. Logically, Tony knows she's a year younger than him. Even more logically, he fears what she can do with those sharp heels.

"You're the one managing my schedule, move some things around."

"Exactly. I'm managing your schedule. And I say that you need to eat _now_ because you have a meeting with the Secretary of State in an hour."

Tony groans. " _Why_ do I have a meeting with the Secretary of State?"

Pepper purses her lips. "Is this moping because of Steve Rogers?"

She shifts moves the toolbox to the floor and sits on the workbench across him. Her handbag is dumped on top of it. DUM-E, the traitor, rolls across the small lab to beep happily at her.

"Private sharing sessions are from nine to ten in the evening on days not ending with a ' _y_ '," he tries to deflect. 

He hasn't known what to do with himself since Rhodey had dropped off the thick pile of envelopes a month ago, and he knew it was only a matter of time before Pepper's patience ran out.

" _Tony_ ," she shakes her head, "I'm just asking. If I need to plan an assassination, that's really going to mess up the schedule."

Snorting, he reaches out and lets DUM-E's claw nudge into his hand. 

He trusts Pepper. 

He _does_. 

She had come to his attention three years ago after she braved Howard's staff to inform him of an _accounting error_.

Her integrity or grit wasn't his worry, god knows what he'd done before he met her.

But he had never worried about either of that with Steve, and look where it'd gotten him. Here, contemplating years' worth of returned letters.

There's a missing link, Tony is sure of it, the puzzle pieces buzzing just out of his reach. It didn't make _sense_ that all these letters would simply never reach him when his address was the most recognisable in New York.

The laws of probability rejected the possibility of coincidence.

And yet, and yet.

"I don't think we could afford the scandal of taking down the _darling_ Captain America."

"We're here for you, you know?"

"You and Rhodey? I know."

The names left unmentioned don't go unnoticed. 

He knows how much Pepper disapproves of Ty and Sunset - which was fair. After all, she _had_ been the one tasked with reframing Tony's public image into someone more respectable. 

These days, Tony is better at recognising the people who matter.

It's unfair, Tony thinks. People insisted on remembering that one time he got drunk on a yatch while forgetting the fact that he wasn't Mr. Stark. He was _Dr._ Stark, thank you very much, with three doctorates to boot.

 _And_ , he'd done all that in about the same time it took for Steve goddamn Rogers to become a supersoldier. 

The only reason Tony had stayed longer in MIT was his need to keep Rhodey close, because the thought of having another friend leave him to go fight a war had been too much for him to bear.

He'd done his best to try drive Rhodey away in a panic, partying excessively and throwing up all over the man's shoes.

Better for Rhodey to leave him earlier than to give Tony false hope that he would stay. 

Rhodey had only hoisted Tony out of the dumpster, bringing them both back to the dorms. Unfazed and unimpressed, the man confessed to delaying his own career for the sake of _staying._

_"I didn't suck it up in this hellhole for four years because classes were hard, Tony," Rhodey had scoffed, "I was waiting for your slow ass to catch up with me."_

Somehow, Howard had managed to pull enough strings together with Rhodey so that Stark Industries had a new liaison.

That was the one redeeming act that Howard had done over the years, but even then he knew that Howard was only trying to stop him from starting a new company. 

Tony had plans: Stark Resilient, a company built on saving the world instead of killing it. 

No one had been quite too happy about it when Obie had stumbled over the documents.

"Pep," he sighs, "you know you experience some things and then they're over and you still can't explain them?"

She nods. From her bag, she takes out a packet of frozen blueberries, offering it to him. 

He takes it gratefully. "Friends, letters, supersoldiers. I'm just a man with a bunch of tools."

"You're more than that. You know that."

Tony doesn't know if laughing is the appropriate response, but he can't stop himself. _God_ , how long had it been since that night? Steve's hands around his and the promise of ' _You can be anything you want_ ' ringing in his ears.

The last time he had seen Steve before everything had gone to shit, his friend had been a skinny, _tiny_ asthmatic with a laundry list of physical defects. 

Now, the man was taller than Tony, with a very objectively beautiful body, and a pile of letters that read like a teenage girl's diary.

At least, that was what he had tried to tell himself as he'd traced the neat curls of ink where the letters were signed _'Yours, Steve.'_

Who did that anymore? 

Who wrote letter after letter for _three years_ without getting any reply? Who would go behind Tony's back to befriend Howard Stark? 

Steve knew better than most how difficult it had been for Tony to grow up and be told that the greatest good he could possibly do was to make better weapons.

Then again, his mind rebelled, who would go on designing weapons and protection for a friend who left you ten years ago?

All those times he had hacked into the Pentagon just to try figure out what Steve's next mission would be, and design the latest StarkTech needed to protect him - why couldn't he stop caring?

Because _dammit,_ Tony has Pepper and Rhodey and Happy, but he misses Steve. 

Despite everything - the sharp pain of being left behind, the bitter acid that after all the years of hiding his friendship, Howard preferred Steve's new body over Tony, and the sting that Steve might have been in a league with Howard all these years - despite everything, there had been a sense of _he was my friend before he was your golden boy, Howard_.

A sense of _I knew him before this,_ and _he believed in me before he ever believed in himself_.

There was a time when Steve had been Tony's shelter, but now all those years feel tainted by betrayal. 

Tony isn't sure if Steve was even ever a friend. 

It would be easier if Steve had been pretending all along. He could let go of everything, let years of waiting and anger and jealousy consume him, instead of dealing with the hurt.

Yet, even now, Steve managed to be stubborn as ever, throwing irrefutable proof of all the times he had tried to reach Tony, each letter growing more desperate as Steve wondered too why there was no reply, no answering word from Tony.

The universe was playing some sort of convoluted game on him, and -

Pepper was staring at him.

"I'm rescheduling the meeting," she says.

"What? No." Tipping the rest of the blueberries into his mouth, he tosses the packet aside. "I'm done eating. We can do it now."

She stands up, taking her bag with her. "You deserve a break today. Get out of your own head. I'm calling Rhodey and Happy."

He wants that so much, but he's trying to turn over a new leaf. No parties, more boring responsibilities. 

The board needs to know he's trustable if he's to get some control over Howard. 

"Am I missing something? Why're you being nice?"

"I'm always nice," she gives DUM-E one last pat. "We just have different definitions of nice."

Tony huffs. "Giant bunnies are nice!"

"Nice to throw away," she laughs, not bothering to turn around.

He lets his smile linger until the door to closes behind Pepper. When it does, he motions for JARVIS to bring back his files. The AI was still learning, but it was enough for what he needed. 

"J, where were we on Project Capsicle?"

"Mr. Stark's security protocols have been disabled. Data download at 73 percent."

The SHIELD files had always been kept out of Tony's reach, but Tony was _done_ with the secrets and lies.

"Attaboy. You just need some more personality," he muses. "Remind me to add that to your code."

"Certainly, sir."

* * *

"Mr. Stane," Steve greets. 

There's a disconnect between the _Uncle Obie_ he heard so much of in school, the Obadiah Stane he's read so much of as he scoured for any news of Tony, and the businessman standing in front of him now.

Stane tips his head to Steve. "The legendary Captain, in the flesh. Want a drink?"

"I don't drink on the job."

"I've did the research," Howard points out. "Drinking doesn't affect you."

At the other head of the conference table, Peggy clicks her pen. "Don't bully my agent, Howard. This is a serious matter."

Steve knows she's displeased that Howard had brought Stane along to the meeting, and she'll use Steve as a distraction to have a longer word in private with Howard later.

For now, she peers at them from over her glasses. "I'm a busy woman, so _sit_. I want to know how this many weapons went missing under your nose, Howard, and I want to know _who_ let them go missing."

Howard takes another sip of his drink. Stane answers for him. "We understand the gravity of the matter, Agent Carter, and we're asking our most discreet men to investigate it."

"Agent Barnes and Rogers would be more than happy to help."

It isn't an offer. Steve nods his agreement.

"Ah," Stane says, "I'm sure the good Captain has a vested interest in keeping Tony safe, but we're handling this strictly in-house."

Peggy's gaze stays steady. "Mr. Stane, I don't need your permission. If thousands of Stark weapons can go missing, then you can forgive my abundance of doubt and _disappointment_."

The last word was clearly directed to Howard Stark, who raises a glass at her. "Whatever you want, Pegs."

They go in the same strand of futile negotiations for several more minutes before Howard decides to leave. Peggy rises with him, and Steve stops Stane from following. 

"Growing up, I heard a lot about you," he starts, blocking the door. Now that Howard knows about Steve's friendship with Tony, there's less to hide. If Stane thinks he can use the past against him, he's sorely mistaken, because whatever doubts Steve might be feeling about his old friend, there's nothing as important as this. "I trust _you've_ still got his best interests at heart."

"And Tony's heard less from you as he grew up," Stane tips his head to one side, "you understand why I'm cautious."

"We're only doing our due diligence with this many weapons. My only interest is in keeping good men safe."

Adjusting his suit, Stane gives Steve a smile, then a pat on the shoulder. "We appreciate your hard work, Captain. I'll be in touch."

There's more that he wants to say, and to ask, but he doubts that he'll get the answers he wants.

He moves aside. "Looking forward to it, Mr. Stane."

Steve will leave the interrogations to Bucky.

He's grown enough to recognise that he _is_ emotionally compromised for this, but he trusts that he and Bucky can be enough of a distraction for Nat to dig through unseen.

 _Eye candy_ , Nat had teased him.

 _Delicious_ , Tony would have joined in the teasing, his voice from years ago ringing clear.

That doesn't matter anymore, though, does it?

When Steve closes the car door, he closes it harder than necessary.

And if his new strength makes the entire car creak, Peggy is tact enough to not mention it.

But she does smile.

* * *

"Let me in."

"No."

"You're Sergeant James Barnes of the 107th and you used to steal cotton candy with Steve. Let me in," the voices from two floors above grow louder.

Steve speeds up his steps, taking the stairs three at a time. Being able to run was always something he was grateful to the serum for, and he's doubly grateful for it now.

He can imagine Bucky crossing his arms and glowering. "What, you gonna call security on me?" 

"That's proof that I know your friend."

"And that's no reason for me to let you in, not after what you did to Stevie."

"What _I_ did?" the first voice hisses, low and outraged, "you don't know half the things I built for that stubborn - "

"Let him in!" Steve yells at them when he rounds the corner of the hallway. "I could hear you from four floors down."

If he focuses enough on Bucky, he might not have to grapple with the fact that Tony Stark is standing in front of their small apartment, trying to break in just as he had broken into Steve's dorm room as a child. 

The lockpicks are still in Tony's hands.

Bucky points that them. "He _was_ breaking and entering."

Tony glares at him. "You gonna call security on me?" he parrots the question back at Bucky.

"Tony. I assume you're here for a reason?" Steve tries to broker some sort of peace. It's been a long day at SHIELD, and he really just wants a shower. Tony, however, didn't seem to be on board with that plan.

"I, uh, wanted to see you?" Tony blinks at him, twisting his hands together before pocketing his lock picks and rocking slightly back on his heels. There's something muted about him now that he isn't yelling at Bucky, a hesitance that might even be _shyness_. "I read your letters."

_Oh._

Weeks of silence meant that Steve thought Tony had really built a pyre out of the old scraps of paper.

He doesn't know what to say next, so he turns around to Bucky, finding there the same shock and confusion. They all knew that sooner or later, a talk had to happen. With the mess that their lives were, he supposes sooner was better. Bucky, however, stayed adamantly against Tony for a few more moments before he gives in.

"Fine. But I'm going out with Sam," he huffs at Steve. "The place better not be burned down when we get back."

" _Thank you_ ," Steve says as he holds the door open for Tony. "Come in."

Between ushering Bucky _out_ \- "no eavesdropping, Buck, you know I can hear you breathe if you try," and "damn that serum of yours, Rogers" - and Tony not bothering to hide his curiousness, it's some time before Steve manages to sit Tony down on the couch with the bribe of warm coffee. He sits on the other end of the couch, turning towards his guest.

"Hi," Tony fiddles with a paintbrush he nicked from somewhere in the room, "hi."

"Hi."

In the privacy of the apartment's small living room, Steve lets himself properly reorient what he knows about Tony. The untameable hair is a constant, but with a more angular, clean-shaven face, Steve understands why Tony wouldn't have any hardship getting girls in bed. His suit, clearly thrown on carelessly over a smudged shirt, screams of all the wealth Tony never used to care about.

The silence hangs thick.

"So, the letters - "

"You've got a nice place," Tony blurts out at the same time.

Steve snorts, disbelieving. "I've had to wipe your drool off my pillow. There's no need to be polite."

Tony barks out a laugh, lips tipping up into a careful smile. "But it is. Nice. Very you." He waves the paintbrush at the framed picture of Steve, Bucky, and Sam in the deserts. "Didn't expect I'd meet your legendary Bucky Barnes like that."

Neither did Steve. Tony never did get time to come visit during their school breaks, and Steve had long accepted that his two closest friends might never meet each other. "We went through a rough time together," he says, breathing through the phantom tightness of his chest. "Buck likes knowing I'm safe."

"His arm?" Tony asks.

Steve swallows. Once. Twice. Thrice.

"You don't have to answer," Tony quickly says, shifting the smallest bit closer. "I shouldn't have asked."

"No, I - " he shakes his head. "You should know." Didn't his SHIELD-assigned psychologist say something about letting things out? "It's why I followed Peggy - Agent Carter - out of the Army, and - "

"You know Aunt Pegs?"

"She monitored the supersoldier program before it was shut down."

"All those times Howard kept going on and on about how he made America's golden boy - and Aunt Pegs didn't even _bother_ mentioning you," Tony runs a frustrated hand through his hair, "I could have just gone to her instead of him."

The conversation's hard enough without old family wounds flaying them both open. "Peggy didn't know that I knew you. Thought you didn't want Howard to know about us and you weren't that much of a celebrity yet when I still received your letters."

Tony winces, folding in some more on himself, and shifting back into his corner of the couch. "I sent them. I really did. Jarvis can testify I wrote them, and I - I'm sorry I assumed the worst of you when I never got any reply."

"What _happened_ to you?" the words slip out, helpless and adrift. Tony's jaw tightens, back straightening, and it's so - Tony used to do that when he disagreed with anyone, stubbornness charging up with a single-minded focus of fighting back. Steve rushes to cover up. "I meant, are you alright? You're not sleeping enough." _You're too thin to be eating_ enough, the thoughts go unsaid. _And anybody who'd jump to worst assumptions is either right or unhappy._

There's a small slant to Tony's lips when he looks away ruefully. "Ten years, and you're still lecturing me to go to bed." 

"This time, I'm not the scrawnier kid," Steve feels an answering smile tug at him, some of the tension loosening between them.

"College was hard, Ty and Sunset are bitter that we're doing better than their family companies, Howard thinks you're God's most righteous man," Tony lets out a small sigh, "and it turns out I need to fix the postal service."

"It might not be their fault at all. We were lucky to be able to get food out there, sending letters was a luxury," Steve shrugs. He would have liked receiving any word from Tony, and the bitter taste of late nights wondering what he'd done to ruin their friendship wouldn't go away anytime soon. But he likes far more that he's here again, back home against all odds, with a chance at fixing everything they'd twisted wrong.

Tony takes a long sip of coffee, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, uncaring of all the etiquette classes they used to have. "And what happened to _you_?" he eventually repeats Steve's question. 

The answer comes in rote. "Village rescue mission." That was what it was supposed to be. "Somehow the other side got American weapons and they didn't want us to know how much or where from," Steve stops, shutting his eyes, the screams still too loud. "They blew the place to kingdom come."

" _Jesus_ ," Tony curses. Then, more quietly, "Stark weapons?"

"Not all of them," Steve hedges around the question.

Most had been those new sleek missiles, but the ongoing investigation and the clear marks of Tony's hand in designing them meant Steve couldn't reveal more. And even if there was no investigation, Steve doesn't have the heart to tell Tony how many people those weapons had killed -

"Is that why you're investigating Howard - or the company, at least - for fraud?" Tony asks, sharp and all too-knowing.

Years of training is the only thing that stops Steve from showing surprise. "That's supposed to be confidential," he manages to answer evenly.

"Is anything really a secret, these days?"

The glint of victory in Tony's eyes is too bright for Steve too look at, and he pushes the subject away, casting for anything that might hold onto Tony's rapid attention. "I met Captain Rhodes."

"He's about to get another promotion," Tony hums lightly, fiddling once more with the paintbrush in his hand, "does that mean you'll have to salute him?"

"I'd salute him anyway for surviving your lab explosions." It's the truth, a silent _I'm sorry I chose to leave you._ "I'm glad you have someone in your corner." 

The small twitch in Tony's hand, the insides of his cheeks bitten just the slightest bit - Tony preens shyly, clearly doing his best to do otherwise. "Yeah, he's the best."

"I'm glad," Steve nods. He himself might not be the best for Tony, but as long as there's someone looking out for his old friend, it's a relief to know that Tony hasn't been going through all these years alone. And yet, Steve isn't blind to the optics of it. Only something big would nudge Tony enough to seek Steve out himself after the fiasco that had been the brunch with Howard. "I'm guessing you're not here just for a social call, though."

"No," Tony admits, putting down the brush. "A few years ago Pep - my PA slash godsent savior - noticed this error in our books, and I used to think it was an honest mistake. I had her look back at it last night," he rummages inside his pocket and takes out a small device. "here. You should have a look."

"Did you invent this?" Steve turns the slim plastic stick around. He's sure one of Natasha's computers can open it.

"I was rather, uh, distracted when they were inventing it," Tony says, "but I encrypted this flashdrive."

Ignoring the implicit _I was probably too drunk at that time_ to focus on more explicit problems, Steve fixes a stern gaze at him. "You didn't program it to hack anything, did you?"

Tony's smile returns, wide and unabashed. "Now, why would I do that?"

The tug of amused warmth is like coming home, like they're fifteen again with no worries and a world of possibility. "Just a hunch."

"You know me so well," Tony chuckles.

"So, uh, Ty and Sunset?" Steve feels brave enough to ask.

"Not anymore. Pepper and Rhodey and Happy are my people now."

"Happy?"

"Harold, but Harold's nearly as boring as Steve, so I had to make do."

If he was still fifteen, he might have argued that there's nothing at all boring with his name, _thank you very much_. He's not fifteen anymore, however, and he needs to ask one last thing before Tony inevitably grows too antsy to stay. 

"You said something to Bucky in the hall," Steve doesn't bother skirting around. Tony knows him as much as he knows Tony. "Something about building me things."

The amusement falls off Tony's face. Rubbing his palm over his eyes, he does his best to stick to his smile, now hollow and tired. "What does it say about me that two of my longest friends have fought in a war?" he scoffs at himself. "And worse, that I build their weapons for them?"

Stark Industries' production being ramped up, the company launching more breakthroughs than ever, the vest that had saved Bucky's life and the bombs that had nearly taken it, Natasha's teasing about the jet - the pieces fall into place, a horrible, dawning realisation.

"You said you didn't want to build weapons."

But even as he says it, he knows Tony's answer:

"What choice did you give me?"

“You were saving my life,” he tries to make sense of everything. _God_ , he'd almost forgotten how frightful it was to be in the care of a man who would, and _could_ , change the world for you. "All this time, you found a way to reach me. Even when I didn't know."

“I saved American soldiers. You don’t owe me anything,” the answer comes flat, unassuming.

A practiced line, said so many times to so many thankful soldiers who'd never know that the hands that dreamt up those blood-stained guns and missiles were the same hands that once planted flowers of _life._

“I owe you everything,” Steve insists, because if he had forced Tony into this hellish cycle of war, Tony should at least understand that he _has_ saved lives. That his legacy wasn't only to build machines of death. “I mean it.”

"How can you be so _goddamned_ \- ten years!” Tony cuts himself off. “Did we really waste ten years on lost letters?”

Did Steve really almost lose his friendship with this crazy, _crazy_ man over lost letters?

“You built your robot, I wouldn't call that a waste.”

“And you grew taller.”

“We’ve both changed.”

“Not too much.”

Steve finds his eyes drawn back to Tony's hands, never not moving, all that energy and dreams of possibility desperate to be let out. _Entropy_ , he had once taught Steve before an exam, _the chaos of the universe._

And what a universe they were in.

Years of misplaced heartache and unread letters, and here his friend was, as brilliant and kind and maddening as Tony had always been.

“Not too much,” Steve agrees.

Tony looks away. “How’s your Ma and Bucky?”

“Ma’s doing well,” he says, nodding towards another frame on the wall: his Ma's first day out of the hospital, Steve finally more than a foot taller than her in the photo. "Bucky's getting better."

“You know, I could build him a prosthetic.”

He sucks in a breath. Of course Tony would offer. It would be the best prosthetic Bucky could ever hope for, but he would see it too much like charity, and could compromise further their mission with the Starks.

“I know," he nearly reaches out to squeeze Tony's shoulder. "What is it that you can't do?"

“Make my father like me," Tony quips quickly. "But, really it's no big deal to make an arm. The best way to keep our country safe isn’t war, and I need to make him like me - ” Tony's phone rings, and he rolls his eyes at it. Another, louder ring. "Ah, shit. Sorry, gotta go. Nosy shareholders wanna know what I'm up to."

He _does_ seem sorry, but it hammers back in the simple truth that Steve is only one of millions clamoring for Tony's time. And there are those who deserve Tony more than him.

"I'll walk you out," Steve stands.

"It's alright. You're tired, and I can't - I, uh," Tony scratches the back of his head, not bothering to stand up yet, "did you mean it?"

"What?"

"The letters. You worried about me, collected articles and - nevermind, all of this was stupid. You left me for a reason."

Tony flashes him a smile, braver than Steve could ever be.

"I'm sorry they didn't reach you when they were meant to," the words tumble out of Steve, collapsing years of practicing what he'd say if he ever got to talk with his friend again. "I'm not - what did you call it? - in a league with Howard. I came for that brunch at the mansion because I - I wanted to see you, and I'm sorry I didn't listen to you when you said going to war wasn't the way out, and - "

Tony's standing now, hand landing on his shoulder, squeezing once before darting away. The touch is enough to quiet him.

Smile turning smaller and softer, Tony slips his phone away. "It's good to see you, too."

"Yeah," he nods quickly, cheeks warm from his ramble. "I'm glad you're doing better now."

"I'm glad you're home."

"I guess I'll, uh - oh! Your number. Can I, may I have it?" Steve doesn't know _why_ he's suddenly stumbling so much. "For after I open your flashdrive, that is."

"How _forward_ of you, Rogers," Tony laughs, "but I'll call you."

"But you don't - "

"I found your address, really think I can't get your number?" Tony smirks, then bites his lip, shifting from one foot to another, "sorry, that actually sounds scary, please don't repeat that to the press, I'm trying to keep a low profile."

Gathering himself, Steve teases back. "Tony Stark, low profile?" 

"I'm full of surprises."

"Would you like to, I dunno, have another coffee some time?" he offers when Tony dawdles some more. He knows more than most that Tony is a busy man, but if Tony's still lingering here, then, "Ma would love to see you again, and I'll keep Buck from biting you."

"And _you're_ full of surprises too," Tony mutters despite seeming pleased. "I'll call you," he promises.

"Or I could try sending you another letter."

"Or you could come in person," Tony finally walks to the door.

"Maybe I will."

"Never could back down from a challenge, could you, Rogers?"

"Like you're any better," Steve shoots back.

When Tony laughs, it sounds like hope.


	3. Tony - 1995

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony comes to several realisations as the weapons investigation leads to consequences.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope all of you are doing alright :) there's some explosions and a bit of injury that happens and is resolved in this chapter, and this fic has somehow turned into a pseudo bodyguard au on top of everything, so i hope you enjoy this unusually long entry <3

Tony knows a total of nine hundred forty three things about Steven Grant Rogers.

JARVIS counted, and Edwin Jarvis frowned at him, which meant Rhodey did too, and Pep followed not long after.

Item eight hundred and sixty one on his list was: _looks damn good in that uniform (even better in person)_.

That particular point was a bit of a redundancy, because it was also listed as item four hundred and thirteen, as JARVIS so conveniently pointed out.

Back then, at sixteen years old and his traitorous AI child only a fickle of his imagination, Tony had hacked into the Pentagon, scouring for details on the supersoldier program Howard had been obsessively working on and Steve had been enlisted in.

He was convinced that the universe was laughing at him: his best friend leaving him to be his father's lab rat, which gave Howard yet another reason to leave him too.

But the oversized uniform had hung adorably over Steve’s small shoulders.

 _Priorities_.

“He’s investigating your company,” Rhodey tells him flatly, taking another long sip of his milkshake. “He could just be using your connection to dig for something.”

Glancing around the empty diner, Tony lowers his voice. “Yes, but he’s _Steve_. Skinny Steve who stood up to Ty and Sunset for me.”

“He left you.”

“Sourpatch, he sent letters.”

“Which conveniently stopped arriving.”

Fair enough, but with solid proof that Steve didn't mean for his letters to get lost, and with a potential ally to tackle Howard, Tony is more inclined to forgive. “Yeah, I’ve got JARVIS tracking that down.”

Wrong answer. It only provides Rhodey an extra point of attack that he relishes. “Has Mr. Jarvis gotten along with your murderbot yet?”

“J is not a murderbot, thank you very much," Tony reminds him, "and Jarvis is starting to adjust to the _great_ honor of being the voice of a tech revolution."

Rhodey takes a loud sip of his milkshake that somehow manages to sound sarcastic. "I'm just saying, you don't have the best history with 'friends'," he makes air quotes in Tony's face, "from your beloved boarding school."

"Enemy of my enemy is a friend?" Tony suggests. "Or at least, Howard'll listen to the golden soldier. I'm twenty five, and all I've ever done is blow things up."

"Not true, you've also kissed some people along the way, and saved an orphanage or two."

"But I can do _more_ ," he insists, because he's tired of everyone telling him he can't. Sure, the arc reactor isn't as efficient as it could be, but even at its most expensive, the reactor could end the war for oil altogether.

And the reactor's just one of his many ideas that he knows will work, if only Obie would stop breathing down his neck about the lastest missile specs.

Swirling his straw around the last of his milkshake, Rhodey raises a brow: a silent _of course you can do more_. Then, “if you’re meeting Steve again, Pepper and I should get to meet him too.”

Tony frowns. “Didn’t you meet him already?”

Rhodey rolls his eyes. “I had to drag your ass out of dumpsters in college because you were too busy mooning over him – ”

“ _Moon?_ I don’t moon – ”

“You absolutely do, and I deserve a proper introduction to that man.”

Tony considers saying no again, unwilling to have his worlds collide. Steve was his past, meant to be kept in sepia smiles and the ceaseless tug of yearning nostalgia.

But it was too late, anyway. Everything was tangled in a mess that felt too deep for him to dare to look closely at.

“Fine," he relents with a huff. "As long as you promise not to murder a national icon, Fuzzybear.”

“I’ll limit it to maiming.”

Tony shrugs. “Good enough.” 

* * *

Peggy Carter was the wisest woman Tony ever had the fortune to meet. Of course, he would have liked to put his mother on the same high pedestal, but Maria married Howard, and that always seemed to be the opposite of wisdom, no matter how much Tony loved her.

Tony doesn't ask Aunt Peggy ' _what were you thinking_ ', because he knows she always has a _why_ to back it up.

He doesn't ask her the ' _why didn't you tell me_ ' question either, because he knows she takes her secrets to the grave.

Instead, he takes a calming sip of his tea - the _sacrifices_ he makes for his godmother - and looks across the table to her graying hairs, the small uncovered scar on her cheek, her unpainted nails and her lips free of her warpaint lipstick. Here, in her Washington home, she's still every bit Agent Carter, but she's chosen to meet Tony as the Aunt who had given Tony a flowerpress for his birthday when Howard had given him an engine, and later blueprints when Obie had given him champagne.

So Tony swallows down the sharp, stinging questions and says, "did Steve ever ask about me?"

She puts down her cup soundlessly. "Not at first." Her eyes meet Tony's, all too knowing. "But when he learned that a Stark was developing the serum, he asked me about you, and how you were doing."

"Did you send him to the mansion?"

 _Did Steve come to see me, or was he just following orders?_ Tony wants to ask, the doubts still choking despite his want to forgive. What was that quote about forgiveness and forgetting? It was the forgetting which he couldn't do, and that meant no matter how much he forgave, he couldn't ever let himself get close to Steve again, his heart still stinging from years of being left behind.

"You were the first he wanted to see when his duty to the Army expired." A pause. "I couldn't promise you that he would come home. I didn't want to hurt you any more than you were hurting." That's as much of an apology as Tony can expect from her. He's about to say so when Peggy continues, "I sent him to you as soon as I could, because there's no one else - except perhaps your own Captain Rhodes - who I'd trust to keep you safe."

Tony swirls his tea, adding two more sugars to it. If he can't have coffee, some sweetness will have to do. 

"What did you tell him when he asked of me?"

"The truth. You were changing the world, and you were as happy as you could be. He would always go back out fighting with more purpose."

There was something about that which settled uncomfortably close to his heart. Gulping down the tea to wash off the ashy taste on his tongue, he shifts in his couch. 

"What's going on with the company? I've always been able to keep myself safe."

Peggy raises an eyebrow - which, _fine_ , was entirely fair of her. 

There might've been a time in college when Tony had taken to the vices Howard had taught him: the drinking, the parties, the women. 

He had been desperate to feel _anything_ other than the aching emptiness. 

No matter what new heights he achieved, no matter what breakthroughs he'd accomplished, he would come back to an empty dorm room and 'friends' who only wanted him for his name. And when Peggy had tried to intervene, he had rebuffed her, spiralling further away.

If she had told Tony about Steve half a decade ago, Tony wouldn't have listened to her.

He would have lashed out, angry at the world, angry at himself, angry at the uselessness of it all, the sinking feeling that no matter how much he did, it would end up as a zero sum. 

Everything would be empty, Howard would keep tipping back the next bottle of overpriced whiskey, and Obie would always have his eyes on the _next_ , the _better_ , the _more,_ choking Tony with endless demands that made him even angrier at himself.

But he's learned since then that hating the world doesn't make it love you more.

He supposes it's that lesson that's stopped him from hating Steve, too.

"We don't know what's wrong," Peggy shrugs, "if we knew, there wouldn't be an investigation."

"But you have a suspicion," Tony latches on quickly.

"Howard's never been satisfied with what he has, but he has principles." Peggy smiles ruefully. "Sometimes, I don't agree with those principles. There are others, however, with fewer principles than him."

"Are you allowed to tell me this?"

With a laugh, Peggy stands, leaving her armchair for the empty spot next to Tony on the couch. She wraps an arm around his shoulder. "I thought we agreed a long time ago that nobody ' _allows_ ' me to do anything." Then, more seriously, "you're a good man. You shouldn't belong in war, Tony."

"What choice do I have?"

"We always have choices," she takes his hand in her free one, the calluses on her trigger finger brushing against those on Tony's hand, young but forged in hard work and heavy lifting. "Compromise where you can," Peggy closes her eyes. "And when you can't, don't."

Tony sighs. "Plant yourself like a tree," he finishes the words he's heard her say a hundred times before. "I've tried. No matter how stubborn I am, Howard and Obie won't let me change the company's course."

"Why?" Peggy asks.

"You ask them."

Her lips twitch up. "I've got agents to do that for me."

The puzzle pieces fall into place suddenly, slotting so perfectly that he feels dull for not seeing them before, for not paying closer attention. 

"You think someone is involved in the weapons going missing." The words sound insane, blasphemous. "That they _want_ to make more weapons for - "

"Don't let this be your fight," Peggy holds onto him tighter. "You keep yourself _safe_ , you hear me?"

How can she _ask_ that? "It _is_ my fight. I built those things. _I'm_ responsible."

"A knifemaker isn't responsible for what the knife cuts."

"I don't make knives!" Tony jerks his hand out of her grip, digging his nails into his fist because _dammit_ , how could he miss this? "I make missiles that can flatten whole towns!"

"And I've killed more people with my own hands than you have," Peggy meets his fire with practiced calm. "Steve is there to keep you alive. Please let him."

"Isn't he there to investigate me?"

Peggy clicks her tongue. " _Tony_ , give me more credit than that. You visit orphanages just to stop the babies from crying. Nobody who knows you would say you're capable of doing that much harm willingly. The only person you're likely to hurt is yourself."

He huffs, still dissatisfied. "I don't need Steve to be my babysitter. I can keep myself safe."

"I didn't tell him to be your babysitter."

"What's he supposed to be, then?"

"Your friend."

* * *

Sarah Rogers swats the back of Steve's head, pulls Tony into a tight hug, and shakes Rhodey's hand and hugs him too.

"Stevie doesn't come back here often," she grins, "and when he does, he comes home with _two_ men?"

" _Ma_."

"What? Can't a mother be hopeful for grandchildren?" she darts out of his reach. "Two men just doubles the possibilities, doesn't it, Tony dear?"

Later, Rhodey would call Tony a traitor for dragging him into a minefield of awkward conversations, but Tony maintains that as the official military liaison to Stark Industries, Rhodey had orders to protect him. 

Even if the protection was against strained reunions.

With Rhodey distracting Steve using military talk, Sarah gets free reign over Tony, stuffing him full with cookies that taste like home. 

Then, after a surreptitious glance at the small living room, she drags him out of the tiny kitchen and into another, dark room.

Flicking on the lights, Sarah closes the door with a final _click_ , and - _oh_. There's a small bed, the sheets with tiny little stars dotted over them, a rickety table that looks like it's about to fall over beneath the weight of sketchbooks, and walls painted with colors that once must've been bright.

Sarah twists her hands together. "Is Mr. Jarvis alright?"

Of all the questions she could've asked, Tony didn't imagine it to be that. "He has fewer headaches now that I'm grown."

"And you _have_ grown," Sarah's smile grows smaller but fonder, so similar to her son's that Tony has a hard time looking at the brightness of it. "You've grown smarter, taller, and handsomer, dear."

Flushing, Tony's eyes dart away. 

He shoves his hands in his pockets and steps further into the cramped space, picturing Steve's holidays here, all the summers he had asked Tony to come over. 

These walls were loved.

The splash of red on the ceiling taunts him, an unfinished flower clearly abandoned when Steve had moved out.

 _I could have been happy here_ , he thinks, because in another life where he hadn't been building weapons since he was twelve, he might've stayed up through the night laughing together with his friend, painting worlds of possibility together over stretching summer holidays.

"And you're as kind as ever," Tony tells Sarah, forcing the words out of his scratchy throat.

She moves to sit down on the bed, creaking its wooden frame, and pats the space next to her in invitation. "You're always welcome here, no matter what foolish things my Stevie's done to make you look at him like that - "

"I don't look at him like anything," Tony defends himself instinctively, but he sits down anyway.

"Exactly. You were happy whenever you dropped Steve home for Christmas," Sarah takes out an envelope from somewhere behind her. "And Steve would look at you like you were his world."

Between pondering the truth of her words and doing anything else, he chooses the latter.

Tony tips the envelope open, unfolding the crinkled paper that slides out. Its edges are yellowed, the date written out in looping letters declaring _November 4, 1983._

"What. _What?_ "

He can't be sure of the date, but -

 _Ma_ , the letter reads, _I made my first friend today. You won't like who it is. I know you told me to stay away from him because he's richer than rich, which means he's trouble, but Ma, Tony is stubborn and ridiculous and ridiculously smart, and I think he's as alone as I am._

_His friends don't make him smile, but when he talks about the stars and rockets that I can't understand, he sounds so happy. I think he's the good kind of trouble._

Thewords blur, and Tony chokes back the welling fear, denial, longing that bubbles in him. 

Sarah's hand is gentle on his shoulder, but he feels brittle, and when she speaks, voice all too caring, he doesn't know what to do.

"I told him he didn't need my permission to be happy," Sarah says, hand rubbing small circles against his back. "And I don't think I ever thanked you for putting a smile back on my boy."

He shakes his head. "We're not those boys anymore." 

A lot had changed in ten years, and his world was crumbling around him. 

Why had Tony even agreed to come here? 

Some misguided feeling that maybe this could heal their wounds instead of pressing against them, making them bleed more?

He supposes he wants to find himself again, what he was before he was fully thrust into the spotlight and groomed to become CEO, before alcohol was a familiar taste to burn out the emptiness. 

Yes, he has his people now, friends and family who aren't Ty or Sunset. 

But he looks down at his own hands and he feels unmoored, lost.

Another squeeze from Sarah, her hold on him steady. "You've both changed," she agrees easily, "my Stevie still draws everything he sees, though, and you still point out my kindness before anything else."

"I - "

The door clicks open. 

"Ma?" Steve's head pokes in, "oh."

Plucking at a stray thread from his shirt, Tony doesn't meet his eyes. 

The silence is stifling.

"I'll leave you two," Sarah eventually squeezes his shoulder one last time, "Captain Rhodes must want a drink."

Tony watches as Sarah all but pushes Steve into the room, closing the door again with a click that sounds too much like a death sentence. He hears her greet Rhodey loudly - what had Steve said to convince Rhodey to let him talk with Tony alone?

"I suppose this is where the magic happens," he forces the words out, because if he moves first, he might be able to grapple some advantage over this.

Steve steps towards his table, settling in on the chair that's now far too small for his bulky frame. In a way, it's adorable. 

"Less magic, more madness," Steve laughs, scratching the back of his neck.

This - Tony can't do this anymore. Pretending that everything's fine when Steve is supposed to be searching for an arms dealer in Howard's company, when Tony's just read the letter that's - he waves the piece of paper in the air. 

"Did you mean it, too?" he throws the words harshly at Steve, standing up from the bed and pacing the short length of the room, hand rubbing roughly over his eyes.

"What?" 

"That I made you happy."

"You still do."

 _Dammit._ He could do this with anyone else, anyone except Steve and his damned sincerity that had sucked Tony in, a cesspool of truth among a school - a world - of pretenders. 

"You don't get to say that!" Tony half-yells, keeping his voice down at the last second, because Sarah doesn't deserve to hear this.

"Tony," Steve stands up too, and suddenly he's standing in front of him, reaching out to take Tony's tangled hands, just as he'd always done when Tony had been frustrated as a child. 

He should feel angry, but the sudden warmth only feels safe. 

"I don't know you," Steve starts, "I know you used to recite the Fibonnaci when you needed to fall asleep, that you've memorised Pi to the thousandth digit but can't remember what you had for breakfast. I know you discovered AI and built a bot to help you hold things." 

He laughs a small laugh, letting go of Tony's hands. "I _don't_ know who Pepper is, or what's been keeping you up that you have eyebags I can see beneath your make up. I don't know what's the latest song you've learned on the piano - or if you even play it anymore - and I don't know if you can still tell apart a _Lilium candidum_ from a _Bellis perennis._ "

"It'd be pretty freaky if you _did_ know all that," Tony chuckles, sniffing back the pang of longing which came with the surprise that Steve carried all those little things with him through everything.

Steve smiles. "But I see you and I see my friend who I lost because I was silly and young. And I see someone older, wiser - did my Ma say smarter and handomer? - who I'd very much like to be friends with again."

" _God_ , you could hear everything?" Tony balks.

Sheepishly, Steve shrugs. "Supersoldier. Superhearing."

"You're going to be a nuisance, aren't you?"

"Only because you're twice the trouble that I am."

Tony goes back to the bed, sitting on it heavily, taking the time to let out a long breath. "Rhodey didn't murder you after all, huh?"

"No. I wouldn't put it past him to still be planning my demise, though." Steve waves at the empty spot next to Tony, as if asking for permission.

Which was perfectly sweet and _Steve_ of him. 

"It's your bed. _Su casa es su casa_."

When Steve sits, the bed sinks much lower than before. "Peggy told me she talked with you."

"If you're supposed to be protecting me, why haven't I seen you in the past week, Rogers?"

"There's no need to when you've been a gremlin in your lab all that time."

That brings a real laugh out of Tony, a spark of lightness he didn't expect. "I missed you," the words slip out of him without much thought.

"I can come by the mansion again," Steve offers, "or grab that coffee you promised me to discuss what we've found with the flashdrive from Pepper."

"You found something?" Tony snaps to attention.

"Nothing concrete yet, just useful trails helping Natasha along."

"You could come by my lab," he finds himself offering. Anything to get the weapons out of the wrong hands, and, "DUM-E would love to meet you."

"I'd be honored." Then, Steve frowns. "Does this mean we're friends again?"

Tony barks out another laugh. "What are we, thirteen? Do we need to sign a friendship pact?"

Steve elbows him gently. "Only an NDA, what with me being in a semi Secret Service."

"My knight in shining armor," Tony teases right back, because maybe - maybe having another person up his alley wouldn't be so bad. He thinks about it for one more moment before he asks, "do you _really_ fight with a shield?"

"Did you _really_ name the world's first artificial intelligence DUM-E?"

There it is again, that swooping feeling of lightness that brings up another laugh from Tony, easy and free and lifting the weight of his worries for a few precious seconds.

 _I think he's as alone as I am,_ Steve had written.

Even before they became friends, Steve had already known him better than most. 

And despite everything that's happened between the two of them, that had to count for something, didn't it?

* * *

His schedule changes after that. 

Mondays are for endlessly boring meetings. He had to impress the board of directors - all old, grey men crumbling in their seats - to make them trust him enough despite his wild reputation.

Tuesdays to Thursdays are for working on alternative energy sources under the guise of increasing fighter jet fuel efficiency, Fridays for press conferences or the occasional party to keep his reputation intact - he's learned that being underestimated as a party boy can provide a hidden upper hand - and weekends to spend on his friends or his mother.

Maria was out of town with Howard, though, so today he's chosen to spend his Saturday evening working on a prototype for Bucky's arm, a form of neural interface he hopes he can take further to develop into an actual product line of prosthetics. 

That is, if -

"Obie!"

"My boy," Obie holds both arms wide in greeting. "What're you doing down here? I thought Whitney was in town?"

Tony swivels in his chair, resisting the urge to wince. Whitney was the latest in the long list of ladies the press speculated was involved with him, and while they _had_ been in a fling during college, he's learned that Whitney and Ty were two peas in a pod better left far, far away. 

"Do you remember Steve Rogers?" he pretends to be blasé instead. He realises Howard's obsession with Steve might just be the push he needs to get one of his projects past the board and Obie.

At Steve's name, however, DUM-E rolls over, beeping curiously.

"Go away," Obie brushes the bot off as he nods. "Captain America. Why?"

Placatingly, Tony pats DUM-E's claw, tossing a stray gear to the other end of the workshop for his troublesome child to fetch. 

“I’m doing him a favour," he says lightly. When Obie doesn't immediately balk, he goes on. "The Captain's friend needs a prosthetic, and I’m _sure_ we could mass produce something out of it.”

“Ah," Obie sighs, leaning against the worktable behind him. "Finances, boy. I’ve told you: that market’s too different.”

Careful to not show his frustration, Tony flips the computer screen. The computer's one of his proudest inventions, slick and simple, even if it's too expensive to market yet, and it'll have to do for a while until he discovers holographic tech. 

“We can make it work," he insists, because he's made _everything_ work. "If we don’t take risks, we don’t grow. Besides," Tony digs up his memory of last Monday's meeting, "making something new might quiet the activist protests.”

A long breath. Rubbing at his forehead, Obie's rings glint in the light. 

“It’ll take time.”

That’s more than Obie’s ever given him, and contrary to popular belief, Tony does know when to back down. The art of war: pushing too far might make things go the opposite way.

“Thanks,” Tony says, because if he has leeway with Obie, he has a chance with Howard.

Obie shakes his head, pushing himself from the table and towards Tony. He hooks a hand over Tony's shoulder, pressing down on it. “I know you used to be close with the Captain."

Tony could admit the truth - that they weren't just close, they were each other's anchors in a sea of people who didn't understand them. But that was a truth of the past. 

Now, Obie must be referring to Tony's newfound push for another direction, and the investigation throwing everything into a frenzy. They've delayed product launches, halted manufacturing, seen their stocks wobble precariously on the market.

He knows that Obie means well, in the same way that everyone older than him means well for him. That is, they'd like it if he were chained - metaphorically, of course - more malleable to their wishes.

“We need a shield, not a sword,” Tony simply answers the unspoken question - a test of allegiance he fails because before he's a Stark, he's _Tony:_ not Howard, not someone's to control. 

If he can't get his way with Stark Industries, so be it. He already has JARVIS secretly working on the funds and documents needed to build again another company, all for him to call his own.

The smile Obie makes is tight, and the hand on Tony's shoulder squeezes harder. “And Rogers uses his shield as a weapon. Sometimes compromise is needed. You’re still so young.”

Tony bristles at that, but for now, he holds his tongue. This prosthetics project was more important than his pride. He stands a chance at fixing some of the wrongs he's done to the world, and he knows his fight is better fought in a different way.

“I’ll bring you the designs next week.”

Nodding, Obie lets go of him. “I’m sure you’ll impress us all.”

All of them except Howard. 

Still, Tony gives him a thumbs up, and when Obie walks out of the room, Tony winks at the nearest camera.

"You can come back on, J."

"It's good to be back, sir."

"Let's keep you under wraps till this whole mess blows over, yeah?"

If word got out that he had created an intelligence as advanced as JARVIS, he doesn't know what something like J could do in the hands of the wrong person. 

And he doesn't want to know.

"Of course," JARVIS says.

"Now, where were we on scanning warehouse cameras and facial recog?"

"Seventy three percent, sir."

"Great, run that in the background." Tony turns back to the computer screen, and the blueprint sketches of the arm, "now let's get this baby up and running."

DUM-E rolls over, dropping the gear he fetched into Tony's lap.

A happy beep. His claw opens curiously.

Tony snaps on a pair of welding glasses.

"Yeah. Time for work, boy."

* * *

Hot coffee splashes over his hand.

" _Shit_ ," he curses, wiping it against his suit. Ten thousand dollars, whatever - his dry cleaner will wash it off.

"Sorry."

"Yeah, no," Tony looks up to glare at whoever - " _Steve?_ "

Steve glances forlornly down at the brown staining his own suit, and the ruined white shirt under it. "Hi."

"You're not supposed to be here," Tony turns around to make sure that this _is_ Stark Industries' new LA regional headquarters. "I flew out this morning," he squints suspiciously, burnt hand forgotten, "did you _follow_ me here? Do I need to call security?"

"Technically," Steve straightens his back, "I _am_ security."

"Nuh-uh, Happy's my guy. You're - "

"Here to address a complaint."

"Huh?"

"If I'm protecting you, I should be around."

The smug amusement in Steve's words makes Tony jam the elevator button harder. 

Faster elevators, next on his to-do list. 

"You sure you don't have some super secret spy thing to do?" he snaps.

Suddenly, the coffee cup isn't in his hand anymore, and Steve has a cloth pressed against the lingering drops of spilled coffee on his fingers, the softness of it soothing to Tony's tender skin.

"What's wrong?" Steve asks.

Tony stares at him for a second before he takes the coffee back, gulping down half the cup, because he can't possibly be awake enough now if he's imagining Steve taking care of him like this.

But even after the coffee scalds the back of his throat, Steve still has his handkerchief out, looking expectantly at Tony for an answer. 

"Shitty meeting," Tony waves tiredly in the general direction of the horrid conference room down the hall, "shitty family."

He had come to California to escape New York, only to be greeted by a massive portrait of Howard in the lobby and a Regional Director determined to kiss Howard's ass. 

Steve pockets his handkerchief. "You know what would cheer you up?"

"Donuts and burgers with a sinful amount of grease?"

Car keys dangle from Steve's hand. "A ride in this?"

"Are those - "

"Agent Romanoff might've practiced her lockpicking skills on the Stark Garage here."

The elevator _dings_ and Tony grins, snatching the keys from him. His day looks so much brighter.

* * *

They take the Bugatti down the scenic route, the remains of their burger wrappers tossed by Steve's feet, the windows rolled down to take in the sea breeze. 

There's a gleeful pleasure at flaunting all of Howard's rules, driving cars that Howard had kept far away from New York to be far away from Tony. 

Despite his horrible morning, he's found that there isn't as much of Howard here as he'd suspected. The donut shop didn't recognise Tony as Tony Stark, either too used to celebrities or truly blissfully unaware of the horrors that came with the name. Anonymity was nice: a chance to slip off his masks.

And bickering with Steve over the songs on the radio?

"I'm not a fossil from the nineteenth century!" he yells over the wind as he switches the song back to the beating drums of Nirvana. Bickering with Steve made him laugh.

"And I plan on not being deaf by the time I'm ninety!" Steve yells right back.

"You won't reach ninety if you keep changing - " he swerves around a bend, groaning when Sinatra starts playing again on the radio. Flicking his lights, he skids to a stop at the side of the road just to properly glare at Steve. "Are you trying to make me fall asleep?"

"Don't pull over here," Steve nods his chin towards the strip of sand leading to an outcropping of rock. "You'll block the road less there, and I can change out of this."

Deciding to take pity on the state of Steve's ruined shirt from earlier, he starts the engine again, parking the car off the road for Steve to take his stuff out the back.

Poking his head out the window, Tony raises a brow at the red plaid shirt Steve holds up.

"You are _not_ wearing that abomination in this car. I'm leaving you out here if you dare."

Steve's only response it to shrug off his suit jacket, tossing it in the trunk, then he unbuttons his white shirt right _there_ at the side of the road with other cars whizzing past them. 

"I know I'm crazy," Tony forces the door open, "but I'm pretty sure you're going to get us arrested."

"I'll tell the officer my friend was getting a bit raunchy with his coffee," Steve grins unrepentantly, chucking his stained shirt in the trunk too, and -

 _Oh_.

Tony can't help his eyes that trail down.

He swallows, throat dry.

He's aware that he has a type. Ty: tall and blonde. Whitney: equally blonde and whipsmart. Apparently, that list now includes Steve: tall, blonde, _buff as hell_ , and a genius in his own right.

Except it's Steve, and it should be weird, shouldn't it?

That Steve looks good is a simple fact Tony's grown used to over the years. That Steve looks good enough to eat?

He's seen Steve with blue lips after an asthma attack, joined Steve in stealing pastries from the kitchen with only a flashlight, dusted off the dirt that came with their climb all over the roofs. 

It feels _wrong_ to want to reach out and feel Steve move under him.

But he's trusted Steve with so much, it also feels like a long delayed conclusion, a stray puzzle piece settling into place. Some part of his heart would always bear Steve's mark: it was a battle he surrendered to a long time ago.

"What's got you frowning like that?" Steve steps closer towards him, and oh, no, no, _no_.

Tony doesn't think he can bear seeing Steve's bare body that close. Yanking the keys out, he pushes his way past Steve, staring away under the guise of admiring the sea.

He can do this.

Can keep loving Steve without making things awkward.

Friendships have been ruined by things less monumental than lust, and he doesn't think he can stand losing Steve again, especially when they're both tangled in a web of lies and Howard's pride.

"You know that arm I promised you for Bucky?" Tony flips the subject to the furthest possible thing he can manage.

"Yeah?"

When Tony takes a peek around at Steve's confused face, the plaid shirt is thankfully buttoned up properly, even if he feels a twinge of disappointment at the loss of those toned muscles. “I thought Obie would be more excited," he picks up a pebble from the ground, tossing it out over the cliff, into the sea. "We could revolutionize the prosthetics industry.”

“He’ll come around. You’ve always been able to change the world, Tony.”

Steve's shoulder bumps against him as they stand side by side at the edge of the continent. Before them, the Pacific Ocean spreads wide across the horizon, almost wider than the night sky they used to gaze at as children.

"Actually, this isn't so bad. The view's nice, don't you think?" Tony decides. Yeah. He could get used to a view like this.

"I think it's pretty secluded." There's a little furrow between Steve's brows. "Small chance of assassination, and it's a great vantage point."

 _Okay_ , bit of a jump there, but it _does_ support his new plan."That's a great way to say 'awesome idea, Tony, you should build something here'."

"That's impossible to do."

"And impossible is a boring way to live." He pulls out his phone, tapping quickly at it until it dials on speakerphone. One ring is all it takes for it to connect, and he grins straight into Steve's eyes. "Pep? You know Malibu Point?"

"What about it?" her voice is wary.

Steve shakes his head, clearly torn between laughing and throwing the phone into the sea.

"I'm buying it," Tony says, and when Pepper starts to sputter, he adds, "I'm building a house here. Consider it a cost cutting measure, no more fancy hotels when I visit here."

Pepper sighs tiredly. "Are you sure?"

The sea continues to crash below them, persistent and unyielding. There's a metaphor somewhere, but right now it's just him at Steve at the precipice of everything. "Hundred percent."

After everything comes crashing down, he'll need a place to rebuild, to call his own.

A click of a pen, and the rustling of paper before Pepper replies. "Is Steve with you?""

That's - "How do you know Steve?"

This time, Steve doesn't bother holding back his laugh. "I had to get your schedule from somewhere, Tony."

"Traitor," Tony hisses.

Pepper laughs too, though she manages to sound stern when she says, "Steve, please limit him to one impulse buy a day."

"If Obie or Howard asks about it," Tony cuts in, because he wasn't ready yet to wrap his head around the idea of Pepper and Steve colluding, "tell them I've gotten a burst of maturity and I think the LA Headquarters could benefit from senior leadership."

"That'll thrill them," she shoots back wryly.

"You're the best."

"Seconded," Steve agrees.

She hangs up after Tony makes smooching noises to the phone. He's thrumming with the need to draw out his thoughts, the support beams he can already picture jutting out of the cliffside, a workshop drilled into the rock, an open air balcony as a middle finger to the stuffy mansion halls he'd been forced to grow up in, gardens and a sleek design: a proclamation that this is _his_ vision of the future.

But as he starts to turn back to the car, he catches Steve's face.

"It _is_ beautiful," Steve says softly. "Lonely, peaceful. We're so small - I, sorry. It's rare that I get this kind of quiet."

Tony thinks of the loudness of his weapons firing. There was a time once when he sought to make them as loud as possible, so that their firing would shake people to their bones. It was stupid and daft, and here, where all he can hear is Steve's breathing and the steady, crashing waves, he thinks he can be reminded of the wondrous world he'd tried to destroy.

And the world he's trying to save.

The designs can wait.

"Don't worry, I know I'm smaller than you, but I can build an extra guest room here for you."

Steve laughs again, and Tony makes the very valiant effort to not do something as ridiculously domestic as reaching out to link their hands together.

* * *

"How many of these do you have to go to each year?" Steve adjusts his tie, snagging a tall glass of champagne from a passing waiter.

Tony steals the glass from him, ignoring the hushed ' _hey!_ ' that Steve lets out. If he has to bear seeing Steve in a ridiculously well-fitting army uniform with medals gleaming, he'll indulge himself in some drink, thank you very much.

"More than fifty," he twists around to avoid being spotted by a director's wife. "Also, alcohol is wasted on you so lemme have the fun."

Snatching back the glass and draining it in one go, Steve smirks infuriatingly at him. "I'm supposed to be guarding you, which means making sure you don't choke on vomit in the morning."

"At least that'll be funner than this," Tony mutters.

Being back in the cold November winds of New York after a week in sunny California was dampening his mood, and being forced to come to another one of Howard's galas made him utterly miserable. There was no point in him being here other than Obie and Howard's insistence that he be groomed to be CEO, except Tony's gone through enough etiquette lessons to know how to strike up conversation with a _bush_ if needed. Plus, his time would be better spent actually making the company more money.

Well. Steering the company into a new direction to make more money without blood.

It was a work in progress.

The only upside to all this was that higher security had been deemed necessary for him by the one-eyed pirate who was technically Steve's boss. They'd found another batch of stolen weapons, with evidence that the militias were growing tired of waiting through Tony's unusually lengthy delay between new weapons demonstrations.

Not that Tony was happy with them trying to target him personally for new schematics. 

Tony was happy that he was apparently of high enough importance to warrant a twenty-four-seven Captain Patriot guard. It made things like these far more bearable, especially when Rhodey was back on the field and Pepper had squirreled her way out.

"You know," Tony observes as he huddles them both closer to the crab puffs, "Ms. Martinelli is still single if your dancing skills have improved."

"And you know it's impolite to leave your poor mother without a dance partner."

Tony whips around.

Smiling, Maria reaches out to perk up his pocket square before she presses her cheek against each of Tony's. Her perfume hits him like home: a flowery lightness as subtle as her simple dress.

" _Tony_ ," she breathes out. "You'll keep yourself safe, won't you?"

She says his name reverently, as if she can't quite believe that she has him here. Once, he had resented her for it, unable to reconcile the distant woman of his childhood with the mother trying her best to make up for lost time. Now, he cherishes what little time he can spend with her, marvelling whenever he unearths her dry wit and steely core hidden beneath decades of carrying a reputable image for the Stark name.

"I was doing very well keeping myself safe from vultures like the Frosts until your presence," he pulls his mother behind a pillar, "put us in the spotlight."

"Well, you have your friend here to help ward off the beasts, don't you?" Maria smiles wider at Steve, extending a hand.

"Mrs. Stark, pleased to meet you," Steve takes her hand. "I'm Steve Rogers."

Between them, Tony squirms. 

His mother was more than sharp enough to spot if he was hiding anything, although she most often chose to remain tact about it. Tonight, however, her curiosity and mischief seemed to exceed her tact, and, "ah, the darling Captain everyone's been whispering about. Since my son hasn't offered me one, would you like a dance?" her grip on Steve's hand tightens, "as a thank you for everything you've done for my Tony."

He lurches forward. "Steve doesn't dance - "

"It would be my pleasure." Steve hands Tony the empty champagne glass which Tony takes blankly, because this can _not_ be happening.

"Aren't you supposed to guard me?" Tony protests petulantly.

"Agent Morse's around too to watch over you." 

Gracefully, Steve leads Maria to the center of the ballroom, swinging her in time with the light jazz. Tony switches the empty glass to nurse a tumbler of whiskey, trying to spot whoever Agent Morse was. He doesn't get much of a chance, though, with the Fitzgeralds coming over to try win a contract from him and the Secretary of Defense pestering him about the latest manufacturing timetable.

Over the Secretary's shoulder, Tony squints at Steve's hand very respectfully placed above Maria's waist, their mouths moving in a conversation Tony wishes he could record. Maybe that'll be his next project: surveillance tech.

Two more songs play before Maria finds him again, expertly cutting through the Secretary's rambling.

"Satellite targetting really is the future, isn't it, William?" she hooks her arm with Tony's, "my son's made so many great leaps and he's only twenty five. Makes me exceedingly proud of him."

"Maria," the Secretary lifts her hand to his lips. "The queen of New York herself. I rest easy knowing your son leads us all to greatness."

"Regrettably, I _must_ borrow Tony for a moment." Maria takes out a name card. "I'm sure you can arrange something with his latest assistant."

"Good evening, Mr. Secretary," Tony says with no small amount of glee at escaping him. 

"He's a good one," Maria starts when they're out of earshot, mingled among the other guests who she waves politely at as she weaves them both through the crowd.

Tony makes a face. "The Secretary?" He's not sure anyone who voluntarily comes to a gala thrown by Howard can be called good.

Maria gives him a stern look. "The Captain. I sent him to get me those blueberry pastries you like."

"What secrets did you get him to spill?" Tony feels antsy again. He barely had time to process the fact that Steve is insanely attractive - _damn_ that uniform - and he doesn't think he can bear hearing his mother discuss it.

"He cares about you. When this is all over and we aren't in danger anymore," his mother's smile turns wistful, "you should take him to Italy. He will like the art, you will like the wine and his touch."

Tony gapes at her. "I - "

"Hush, now. You never laughed when Tiberius was around. I know what it's like to feel unhappy."

"I wasn't unhappy," he defends himself, but the lie rings hollow in his ears, distracting him enough to bump against unfortunate guests.

Maria steadies him. "Don't carry more regrets than you should."

Eventually, Steve finds them both, somehow managing to balance a tower of pastries on a tiny plate. 

They're almost delicious enough to distract him from the situation, but Steve edges closer to him and he catches a whiff of lemon shampoo that he can't ignore. Doubt, ugly and dark, rears its head.

He is nowhere near the dignity, honor, kindness that Steve represents, and by accepting Steve's protection, Tony submits to the very real possibility that Steve might take the fall for Tony's sins.

And yet. And yet, there was something reassuring to the fact that someone as upstanding and true as Steve might see Tony - blood and all, sins and all - as a person worth saving.

He mulls over that until Maria gets forced away by an acquaintance that he dodges, leaving him alone with Steve. 

"What did she tell you?" Tony prods sullenly, mourning the last of the blueberry pastries. ' _I know what it's like to feel unhappy_ ,' his mother had said, and, ' _you were happy whenever you dropped Steve home,_ ' Sarah had reminded him. Was it really so bad for Tony to want this?

Unaware of Tony's plight, Steve doesn't bother hiding his amusement. "That I dance better than you."

Tony chokes. "Not true. The last time we had lessons, you kept stepping on my feet."

"Acrobatics was a necessary skill, especially with my shield," Steve shrugs.

That - that hadn't been something Tony had considered. It flashes in his mind: Steve sparring with the other cadets. Had any of those sessions gone anywhere further? _Oh god,_ did Steve and Bucky ever... No. They were like brothers. But had they? 

He tamps down his irrational, bubbling curiosity, and he blames it on the whiskey that he holds out his hand instead, one reckless action traded for another. "Prove it."

"What?"

"Dance with me," Tony blurts out.

The quickest way to get Steve to do something was always to challenge him. That, apparently, hadn't changed.

Placing the now empty plate on the table, Steve steps forward. His ears are strangely red, but he takes Tony's hand in a firm grip. 

Steve's other hand curls around Tony's waist, large and warm. The last time they'd stood this close, Tony had been the taller one, fearful that he'd crush Steve's bony knuckles. Now, with nerves panicking, he searches for things to ground himself in: the feel of Steve's rough calluses against his palm - a soldier's hands - the bright chandelier above them, the whispers of people around them, the easy security that Steve was _Steve_.

He wouldn't throw a drink in Tony's face or spark a shouting match in public. He wouldn't laugh if Tony tripped - well, he _would_ , but he wouldn't do it in the way Ty did to make Tony feel smaller.

When Steve speaks, his voice puffs hot against Tony's skin. "I'm leading."

Dimly, he notices the song changing to a quick waltz, the gentle pressure of Steve's hand on his waist guiding his suddenly uncooperating feet.

Tony thinks he might have made a very big miscalculation.

* * *

It happens during a press conference.

Hindsight was a wonderful thing to have, and as a futurist, hindsight is as useful as it is useless. 

Was it too much to ask for a December spent working peacefully? He supposes that this at least allowed him to skip out of social engagements for the next four months, six if he played his cards well.

As it was, without the benefit of hindsight, he strolls easily into the lobby of the _Ritz._

The SI New York Office would've been enough for a simple press conference, but Obie had insisted - much to Steve's displeasure - that they use a hotel instead. If that hotel belonged to a friend of Obie's, that was just a small part of the story.

Steve flanks Tony all through the lobby, glaring at anyone who dares come too close, Happy at Tony's other side glancing suspiciously at the other men in black scattered around. They both usher him into the elevators, their insistence on guarding him was endearing despite his own insistence that these press conferences were the most boring, uneventful events.

Pepper's in the antechamber to the news room on the seventeenth floor when they get there, speech cards and some powder ready in her hands. "Mr. Stark, for you to ignore," she hands him the cards first.

 _I'm delighted to announce Stark Industries' latest line of military equipment: vehicular enhancements and protective body armor_ , the first card reads. 

Yeah, no. If he's forced to attend these travesties, he'll do what he can to make them less mind-numbing.

"Why are the curtains open?" Steve points at the security feed of the room next door.

"Mr. Stane wanted the natural light to come in," Pepper says. "Made a whole riot about how it's Central Park out there and the image we need."

Shaking his head, Steve taps into the comms, newly designed by Tony. "Agent May? Stane diverged from protocol. Windows are exposed, I need an extra man."

"It's the _sun_ ," Tony grumbles, held in place by Pepper's need to cover up a stray spot on his face. "This is overkill, don't you think? The sun isn't going to murder me, Steve. Be reasonable."

There was endearing, and there was paranoid. 

He knew that announcing Stark Industries' slow expansion into defensive gear instead of offensive measures would rattle some feathers, but it was a compromise he had been able to shove under the door to keep the road open for future change: with the investigation still in full swing, Obie had finally relented, agreeing to give the go ahead for products less prone to being sold in the black market. 

"I think that it's my job to make sure no one strangles you to death out there," Steve says dryly.

Tony huffs, freeing himself from Pepper's final touches. "I've been kidnapped before. I'll survive it."

"You've been kidnapped?"

"Of course. Didn't you read my file? Apparently, I'm highly desirable." Making sure his suit jacket is properly unbuttoned, he pauses by Steve before walking through the door to meet the cameras. "How do I look?"

Steve's frown fades. "Perfect." The word flips Tony's stomach - he's never been nervous for one of these, confident he can get the press to eat out of his hand - but the way Steve's smiling at him is a universe of reasons to feel his heart churn. But Steve's smile slants into a smirk, "like I could perfectly strangle you. And I'll do that if you make us run behind schedule."

"Whatever you say, Captain Tightpants."

Tony tamps down on the hint of disappointment welling up. Because Steve _did_ look perfect in his James Bond-esque suit. _Focus_ , he hears Jarvis chide in his head.

The thing starts off without a hitch. With his back to the tall arching windows, he has to trust that the view really is worth all the hassle. From the corner of his eye, he spots Steve standing just the slightest bit behind him, his lips twitching up when Tony makes a crass joke. Cameras flash every so often, the reporters managing to stay in their rows of assigned chairs even after a protype of his reinforced material is rolled out and rolled back away. He spots a lady - or three - and some men with whom he spent several _amorous_ hours with in the past, and keeps himself steady as they barrage him with questions. It was always the smart ones who wormed their way into his curiosity. This time, it's no different.

"Mr. Stark," the blonde reporter raises her hand. "Your father has always had a policy of having the bigger stick. How does this change the company's choices going forward?"

Obie would want him to answer that this is a move towards having not just a bigger stick but a better one too. Howard would say that Starks are made of iron, and their weapons even stronger. As crass as Tony can be, even _he_ is uncomfortable with how those words sound too much like euphemisms.

"We don't need bigger. We just need smarter, quicker and faster," he answers, ignoring how much those words reflected the first friend he ever had: small and filled with so much righteous anger.

Picking a random part of the room, he points to a man in a red suit. "Yes, you," Tony nods.

"New companies are emerging to compete with in tech," the man stands. "Does this mean you'll be joining them in the race for computing power?"

"If by race you mean utter victory, yes. A lot of the research behind our product development already uses massive amounts of computing not available in the market yet, but let's keep that a secret for now, yeah?" he winks as the cameras go off again in a flurry of bright clicks.

It's then, with Tony half-blinded by the lights, when a shout comes, shrill and panicked. "Ticking! The thing's ticking!"

A reporter. Second row, center seat.

Steve jumps in front of him, hand tight around Tony's arms to keep him behind.

The flash of cameras change directions and seats clatter to the floor, the room clearing in a rustle of yells and curses - because right there, three meters away from Tony is a reporter.

Holding what looks very much like a bomb, the fraying edges of duct tape still attached to it.

Her seat. It must have been taped under her seat, placed there for its proximity to Tony.

"Ma'am," Steve starts, voice gentle but loud enough to carry over the loud chaos. "I need you to hold stilll and read out the time to me."

"Four - four minutes and thirty nine seconds." Her voice is shaky, on the verge of tears.

"Evacuate the building," Steve's orders are clipped. "Get a bomb squad here, an ambulance, a firetruck, and forensic."

This is Captain America, Tony realises with awe. Even without the uniform, he can see the way Steve inspires loyalty, the quick thinking paired with a kind heart that shines as a beacon of hope and peace in a world crumbling and screaming around them.

Someone tries to wrench Tony away but he stands his ground. "I can disarm it." He might not be Captain America, but he _is_ Tony Stark. 

Steve refuses to listen, shoving him towards Happy. "You need to leave."

"Hap, go keep Pepper safe," Tony counters, shoving Happy towards the door. 

Torn, Happy looks at Tony, then the woman - her press badge reads _Carrie_ \- then to Steve before he gives a jerky nod. "I'll keep the car running for you, Boss."

Freed and with Steve occupied by his efforts to calm the reporter, Tony glances at the timer. 

_3:58_

Three things:

One, her finger is on the pressure trigger, which means it has to _stay_ there.

Two, from his first glance, he knows it's a C-450, a Hammer design without an emergency kill switch.

Three, Steve isn't leaving, so Tony knows he has three minutes and fifty seven seconds to save them all.

No biggie.

He can build a bomb in his sleep a hundred times better than Hammer, disarming one just needs - he reaches into his pocket, throws out an empty gum wrapper, and finds his handy pocket knife.

"Carrie, hi." He smiles, dismissing Steve's angry glare. "You're doing a great job and I need you to keep your hand right where it is."

"Tony - "

"Mr. Stark - "

Tony unfolds the screwdriver from the pocket knife, one hand wrapping around Carrie's trembling fingers as his other carefully dismantles the casing, wary of the stray duct tape. "You know, when all this is over," he begins lightly, switching the screwdriver into a mini wirecutter, "you should call Pepper." _3:41._ "We need people as brave as you on our team."

"Re - really?"

"Of course." Like all Hammer products, the inside of the explosive is a mess of inefficient wires, but for once Tony can't find it in himself to complain. Priorities: deactivate timer, then the pressure tigger, and get Carrie out of the room, preferably with Steve too. They're still surrounded by a skeleton staff of SHIELD agents who can protect him without being a star spangled ass. 

He peers inside, searching for the right end, mapping out the circuitry and tracing - _oh._

There's a blinking red light, which doesn't bode well. 

Glancing up at Steve's tense shoulders and Carrie's shaking ones, he has to make a choice. And in the end, it isn't really a choice: more of a foregone conclusion.

Clipping the longest yellow wire, he hears Steve sigh and Carrie sob when the timer freezes at _3:27_.

"Right," Tony takes a deep breath. "Do you trust me?"

"I don't have much of a choice, do I?" Carrie sniffs.

Steve finally meets his eyes with something other than anger etched on his face. "I would trust Tony with my life, ma'am."

Fixing his grip around her hand, he keeps his smile firmly up. "You're pressing on the trigger now. Letting go of where you're pressing on that blue wire there is going to set it off. But there's a three-second window because the wires are... long." _Because resistance and bad design and whatever. Not important_. "Can you let it go in two seconds?"

Carrie nods quickly.

The pieces click in place for Steve - Tony is making a trade, and, "let me catch it - "

But it's too late. He pulls the device out of Carrie's hand, thumb jamming hard against the pressure sensor. 

How does Tony tell him that if this blows in any of their hands, there's no surviving at such close proximity?

Besides, this is _his_ responsibility, no one else's. "Sorry, Steve," he swallows, his free hand twirling the wirecutter. Contrary to popular belief, he _does_ want to live, does dream of living old enough to retire behind a white picket fence in a lakehouse with bots instead of children and fuzzy alpacas instead of dogs.

Steve's jaw hardens. "Agent Coulson, if you could escort Miss Carrie out?"

A junior agent scuttles forward, handing Steve a large, round packet before helping her up, draping his suit jacket around her to help with the shock.

"Can you escort the Captain out, too?" Tony pleads to the Agent, who freezes and shakes his head, forcing Tony to deal with a bomb about to blow _and_ Steve's stern glare of disapproval.

"Tony, tell me we can either wait for disposal to come or you can disarm it on your own."

Disappointing Steve was the worst, wasn't it? "You should go, Cap. I'm sure the sun won't be the thing that kills me today."

" _Dammit_ , Tony, this isn't the time! And I am _not_ leaving you."

Instead of arguing further, he nods towards the packet in Steve's hand. "Is that your shield?" 

The light in the bomb starts to blink even faster. 

There was no disarming the thing: it was meant to be a security measure, an explosive within an explosive, the second one triggered if the first was disabled. Most of the time, Tony hates Hammer. The rest of the time, he _loathes_ that ass kissing slime.

Steve nods, looking away. "Not going to be much use against an enemy I can't punch."

That helplessness didn't belong in Captain America.

Wait.

"Is this entire building clear?" A plan starts to form, snippets of old conversations coming to light through desperation. Mentions of vibranium, Howard's hunt to synthesize it, Captain America's skill with it.

"Yes, except three more agents on this floor."

"Cap," the nickname rolls off his tongue, foreign enough to jerk Steve's attention back to him. "This is going to blow in around two more minutes, you need to - "

"I'm _not_ leaving you."

"- send your agents away."

"Give me the bomb."

"I'm going to chuck the bomb as far as I can, and you're going to use that shield."

"The shield can't protect you from _fire_ , Tony!"

"Better than it blowing up in my hand," Tony argues fiercely back. 

It doesn't matter if Steve is displeased with him. He looks Steve right in the eye, taking in its blue, the frown between them and the stubborn jutting out of his chin. 

This might be the last face he'll ever see, and he thinks he'll be... okay if it _is_ the last. 

But if he calculates the trajectory well enough, he's nearly sure that Steve's serum will heal him quick enough from any burns or bruises.

That's the important part. 

Steve can do more good than Tony can. 

Tony isn't going to do any of the last words kind of shit, no matter how much he wants to kiss that frown away. That wouldn't be kind or fair to Steve, not when Steve has a whole life left to fall in love with someone else.

All that matters is that no one other than Tony is going to die because of him today, and all that's left now is to wait for Steve to give in.

One.

Two.

Three -

Steve makes a frustrated noise, ripping away the cloth covering his shield. The bright white star gleams in the sunlight. "Fine. But Tony, I - "

The bomb starts ticking again, clock now down to _00:13._

" _Fuck_."

Before Tony can yell a warning, the bomb's yanked out of his hand, Steve's throw arching it high and his strength slamming it _through the wall._ And then Steve's body is curling around him, and the shield a blur of red and blue as Steve brings it up over their heads: "stay with me," Steve pleads.

 _Always,_ Tony wants to promise, but the explosion rocks the building and sends them into a world of bright oranges and grey dust and - the ceiling starts to crumble, there's a sharp pain in Tony's leg -

* * *

"You idiot," Steve coughs.

Blearily, Tony looks around them. 

The windows have been shattered, and there's a large wall of rubble to the other side of the ruined room. Sirens ring loud in his ear, but he can feel all his toes and fingers despite the aching pains throbbing everywhere. Next to them, the shield lies gathering dust on the remains of the carpeted floor. 

Steve's blonde hair has taken a grayish color from that same dust, but Tony can swear the tired smile on his face is among the most blessed sights he's seen, more blessed than the Vatican.

When Tony leans up to glance at his leg, he manages to see the remains of Steve's suit jacket tied loosely around his upper leg before his ribs hurt too much to keep sitting up.

Tony lies back down against Steve's chest, the quiet _thud-thud_ of the heartbeat there a soothing sound over the piercing sirens. 

"Please tell me nobody kissed me," he mutters, squinting at the few bits of sunlight trickling over the piles of bricks and crushed steel.

"That rubble over there is blocking the fire from us," Steve tells him, which doesn't answer the question. "And Fury's working on getting a ladder up to us."

Eyeing the cracks on the ceiling and the soft dust falling on them every so often, Tony hopes that it'll be sooner than later. "Is my leg bleeding?"

"Shrapnel caught your thighs, it's not bleeding much but it doesn't look good."

"It doesn't _feel_ good," he grumbles, shifting slightly. His head feels woozy, and for a few selfish seconds, he's glad Steve didn't leave. _God_ , he's never going to make fun of Steve for being paranoid ever again. He's also going to design something that'll protect him from falling buildings. Maybe a suit of armor like those Arthurian knights Steve seems to resemble.

Tapping at Tony's cheek to keep him awake, Steve purses his lips, clearly worried. "Fury should get through in a few minutes."

"Just in time for dinner, then?" he teases back, trying his best to summon a smile through the hazy cloud of pain. Anything to get that frown of displeasure off America's face.

His efforts are rewarded with a small chuckle that rumbles against Tony's ear. "Asking for a date, Tony?"

Did he hit his head too hard or does Steve look even more delicious all mussed up like this? Either way, a date sounds great if he discarded all the reasons it isn't. Like the fact he doesn't know whether Steve is into men, much less men as disastrous as himself. But being as disastrous as he is, the word slips out of him.

"Maybe."

"What?" Steve jerks back, jostling Tony enough that a sharp pain lances through his leg.

"Ignore me," Tony winces. _Stupid._ He's supposed to be a genius. "Adrenaline," he pulls out an excuse.

Except Steve has known him since before he knew how to lie properly, since all his tells were for the world to see. Through the small patches of sun falling over his face, he watches with dread as Steve's frown softens back to his earlier smile.

"You know," Steve starts as Tony studiously avoids his gaze, "there was a time when I thought of the future and all I could think of was you."

"Hard to believe that, Rogers," he scoffs back quietly, pushing harshly down the useless hope that bubbles in him, bright despite the throbbing pain. _Was._ Not is. "If I recall correctly, your plan involved leaving me."

Tipping his head to the side in concession, Steve chooses his words slowly, scrutinizing eyes finally moving from Tony and towards the fallen chandelier several feet away from them. 

"I knew you were going to build a world worth fighting for, Tony. You never needed me for that." Steve's hand brushes against the star of his shield. "I couldn't ever build something this grand."

"Being stuck in a crumbling building isn't _grand_ , not even when it's the Ritz."

"It is when it's with you." A pause, the thuds of Steve's heart coming a tiny bit faster in his ear. "Tony, you helped launch the Hubble. You figured out _agriculture_ and intellicrops for your thesis while playing around with satellites. None of your dreams started with blowing things up."

He's forgotten what it's like to be in the affections of someone as stubbornly hopeful as Steve - the way Steve had collected his wishes and remembers them for a rainy day like this when Tony can't find the faith to hope anymore. It's Steve who believes in those wishes for Tony, who fights the fight in Tony's stead when Tony can't muster the strength to keep fighting against the futility of everything.

To have that much faith placed on his shoulders is daunting, but comforting - because where Obie pushes for _more_ , Steve is happy to simply walk beside Tony through it all, standing guard.

"You know what I wrote for my thesis," Tony rephrases the words because if he tries to say it differently, maybe they'll make more sense. Maybe he'll snap out of this fever dream and no longer be stuck on the seventeenth floor of this cursed building.

Nope, still insane.

Steve huffs. "You're an idiot," he tells Tony again, which in Tony's very objective opinion is mean. "When we get out of here, I'm going to give you a lecture about self-sacrifice and we're going to go share a very large pan of pizza."

"Are you sure _you're_ not concussed?" Tony squints suspiciously at him. That sounded too much like an offer for a date, with leeway for him to brush everything off as friendship.

"I nearly lost Bucky to an explosion like this. I can't lose you either."

Well. Bucky was family to Steve, and while Tony's heard of the friendzone, he didn't know a _family_ zone existed. A hysterical part of him thinks that as an innovator, he might as well be forging new discoveries in romance too.

"I promise if I bleed out, my ghost is gonna haunt the hell out of you," Tony edges around the pain.

Steve barks out a loud laugh, and when the wall shakes, showering more dust over them, he shields Tony's eyes with his hand, brushing away the dust that lands on his cheeks with a thumb.

"No dying before you build DUM-E a brother. Or a sister," Steve says.

Now openly staring at Steve in confusion, fighting hard against the urge to lean into Steve's hand, Tony props himself up on his elbows and ignores the fine pieces of rubble digging into his skin. 

"Are you asking me for _kids_ , Rogers?" Was this a ploy to distract Tony from the hell that was his entire body, or did Steve really mean his offer? "I don't put out till the third date," Tony adds for good measure.

Lips tipping up to one side, Steve smirks amusedly. "Shame. I'd be fine with putting out on the first date."

"Does America know their Captain has a foul mind?"

"How pissed would Howard be if you slept with me?" Steve parries.

Huh. Very pissed. And now Tony has another reason to want to date Steve other than those very shapely buttocks.

Still, he's pretty sure he isn't supposed to be checking out his best-friend-slash-bodyguard-slash-national-icon while he's trapped in a building that might fall over them soon. There are bigger concerns. For example, "I think you should be more afraid of what Peggy would do to you."

"If she doesn't kill me for this, I think I'd survive whatever she does," Steve says after a moment's thought, and _okay_ , Tony understands that when Steve sets his mind to something, the man can be the most stubborn mule in the _galaxy._

"Is this a guilt thing - or a near death thing - or a pity thing?" he rests his head on Steve's lap again, because _ow._ Sitting up hurts marginally more than the possibility of Steve doing this out of _pity_. "If you wanted to piss Howard off for me, there's about a million one other things I can suggest you do."

"Just - " Steve cuts himself off when they hear a chopper outside, most likely there to help control the fire on the other side of the building. "Everything's a mess and it's going to be an even bigger mess when we get out," he continues with a sigh, fingers brushing away a trail of sweat across Tony's temple. "I just need something good. Something to look forward to at the end of everything."

That couldn't possibly add up. Tony has met thousands of soldiers, has listened to Rhodey say that Tony was one of the people he loved coming home to, has learned from their stories that out in the foreign sands of war, there were memories you needed to hold on to so your hope could keep burning. 

He had always doubted at some level that Rhodey meant what he said. He doubts even more the truth of Steve's words, especially when he's met Bucky and Sam and Sarah and the rest of Steve very un-fucked up family. 

"Are you sure I qualify as good?"

"Better than good," the answer comes quick. 

Right. That's it. "Steve," he says as sternly as his aching ribs allow him. "My leg is bleeding and my chest hurts and at least your chest is comfortable but somebody has a target on me and there's nothing except a few feet of cement separating us from getting burned to death." He takes a deep breath, finding some courage to meet Steve's eyes. In the pale light, he can barely see their familiar blue. "I'm gonna need you to spell things out very, very unsubtly."

Steve bites his chapped lip, pulling it between his teeth adorably and _unfairly._ Hand shifting from Tony's temple, Steve makes an aborted move towards Tony's own hand. "Stop me if you don't want it?"

"Want what?"

Suddenly, Steve is leaning down, eyes flicking towards Tony's lips, and no, nope. Not possible. 

Pushing at Steve's shoulder, he's both gratified and disappointed when Steve _does_ stop, frozen in something that seems too close to fear. Which is also not right, because Steve shouldn't have to be afraid.

"Did I hit my head?" Tony demands, digging his fingers into Steve's shoulder because it's warm and real. "Am I, I don't know, dreaming this up?"

"You dream about me often?" Steve ridiculously finds the audacity to find this funny. They're so close he can see the spray of freckles at the base of Steve's neck even in the scant light.

Pleading the fifth, Tony decides that if his mind insists on him being caught in this embarassing fever dream, he might as well enjoy it.

He hooks a hand around Steve's neck pulling him down - an impossible angle that somehow works as Steve turns pliant under his touch.

It's a quick and chaste thing, the dust on their lips ashy, but it's scalding, a hot brand marking a new beginning. When Steve pulls away, his hand lingers on the curve of Tony's jaw, rubbing gentle, almost unconscious circles over Tony's dimples.

"No pizza," Tony grins wider. "Just bed, and you."

"Hospital bed, yes," Steve pokes at his cheek again.

"That's boring," he groans, wiggling around to find a nicer position on Steve's lap.

"If it wasn't for my shield, you'd be in fifty pieces right now."

" _That's_ not my fault!" Tony protests. "I was attacked!"

"Exactly. I'm chaining you to that hospital bed 'til we find out who's responsible."

Pouting, Tony pokes back at Steve's stomach. "My leg doesn't even hurt anymore." The doctors will fix it in five hours tops, and he can get back to his priorities: trying to kiss that smirk off Steve's face without turning everything into an enormous disaster. With the investigation going on, Steve tasked to protect him, and their friendship hanging in the balance, things were bound to get messy.

But for now, he lets the buzz distract him from the pain, and when Fury's team finally arrives to carry Tony out and into the medevac chopper, he holds tight to Steve's hand, refusing to let go of his comfort.

"Stay," he asks.

Steve squeezes his hand back. "Only for you."


	4. Steve - 1996

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Tony try to make sense of the spider's web they've found themselves in, and a car crash happens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> an intermezzo before the chaos. hope you all are staying safe and doing well <3

Dating Tony was like dating a hurricane. 

Juggling bodyguard duties while keeping their relationship a secret hadn't gotten easier in the six months since the horrible fiasco at the _Ritz_. There was, of course, the real risk that their relationship might jeopardize the investigation, but there was also the fact that the messy politics of Captain America dating Tony Stark weren't anything they felt prepared to face.

To the public, Steve was merely one more of Tony Stark's faceless rotation of bodyguards. Without the cowl and with some hairgel, Steve became far less recognisable as a Medal of Honor hero.

They would much rather keep it a Steve and Tony affair, and in that regard, the bodyguard duties made it far easier to sneak some time together with Tony, who had taken to spending alternate weeks in New York and Malibu as the groundwork started on the cliffs to build a new mansion there.

This week they were enjoying the breezy warmth of New York - at least, when Tony wasn't holed up in the lab building a thousand and one new things. 

"I should make a flying car, shouldn't I?" Tony leans across the workshop table to steal some of Steve's soda.

Steve lets him, because it means that when Steve leans across the table to steal a kiss, the sweetness of it fizzles across his lips. "You should get some sleep."

"It wasn't _me_ who kept me awake last night," Tony waggles his brows, voice muffled from the burgers in his cheeks.

Given limited options to have a normal lunch outside, they've taken to arranging quick dates in the safety of Tony's workshop, Mr. Jarvis dutifully delivering their burgers accompanied by a threatening glare at Steve. These moments were a much needed oasis in an otherwise dreadful world of false paper trails and frustrating dead ends.

"We had to do _something_ to celebrate your leg finally healing properly," he defends himself.

Tony huffs, pointing at the blueprints for the next Stark fighter jets. "Obie wants those done by next week, and I'm thinking - I can install trackers on each item manufactured. I've thought of how to change the materials for the chips to make them even smaller. Howard and Obie won't even realise they're there."

"Nuh uh," Steve shakes his head. "No talking shop while there's food between us."

"It's not my fault either that you eat so _much_."

There's too much between them for Steve to feel even the slightest bit of sheepiness at the pile of burger wrappers he's accumulated. Being a supersoldier was hard work. 

But it was also a handy excuse to draw things out. "Maybe I just want to spend some more time with you."

"Maybe you're manipulating me into taking a break."

"Ms. Potts and I both agree you need more rest - you wouldn't even stay in the hospital for more than a week."

"Ms. Potts should be fired for scheming with a spy."

"Whatever you're planning, you should be careful. Nothing we find looks good - missing names, addresses that've disappeared. Mr. Stane doesn't seem very pleased."

"Obie's been siding with Howard more these days," Tony sighs. And Steve knows how much it pains Tony to keep their relationship a secret from someone he once considered close family. The only people in the mansion who knew the truth about their soirees are the Jarvises. Not even Maria Stark was privy to the truth.

Steve shakes his head. "Don't be reckless." 

The _Ritz_ was too close of a call.

He can't risk losing Tony, especially not after everything. Not when this was their second - third? - chance. Not when Tony was so... _Tony_.

"I'm always careful," Tony wipes his hand on his tank top, adding even more grease on it. Some of their school's etiquette lessons, however, seem to have stayed with Tony because he offers Steve one of the paper napkins. "I've slept with hundreds of women and never gotten any of the horrors from sex ed, and I've slept with _you_ and no one's noticed."

Torn between laughing and frowning, Steve decides on the former. It's easier to smile when Tony is around. "I'm gonna need you to make some armor," he takes the napkins gratefully.

"Armor for you?"

Steve shakes his head. "For _you_. So you'll be safe from bombs and DUM-E's occasional fire extinguishers."

" _Hey!_ " Tony wags a finger in the air, "I'll have you know - "

"Hold up," Steve reaches across the table, taking out the clean end of the napkin. "You've got - " he swipes the sauce off the corner of Tony's lips. "Alright. Go on."

Visibly, _adorably,_ flustered, Tony wipes the back of his hand over his lips. "I'll have you know my body armors are already the best of the best."

"Your body is certainly the best of the best," Steve smirks, enjoying for once the slight pink on Tony's cheeks. Fair play for all the times Tony had tried to get Steve flustered.

"You're the supersoldier, Rogers."

"And you're the child prodigy. I'm pretty sure you can come up with even better body armor for Captain America's boyfriend."

Tony kicks Steve's shin playfully under the table. "You're a dork." There's no heat to it, only a fondness that curls warm in Steve's stomach. "Captain America is a _dork_."

"You're the one who snuck into my room all those years ago," Steve reminds him, leaving Tony to splutter as he rinses his hand and settles back into the couch he had claimed for sketching. Flipping his sketchbook open to his latest half-finished drawing of Tony, he starts a small rendition of Tony eating burgers.

"And you're the one who snuck in here three hours ago," Tony eventually fires back.

"Couldn't let you have all the fun in here alone," Steve teases. He'd like to say ' _didn't want you to be cooped up by yourself_ ' or ' _I miss you when you vanish down here_ '. But he knows Tony won't believe him yet.

Until he manages to convince Tony of the truth: that given the choice, Steve wouldn't willingly leave Tony again - he has his sketchbook and this growing collection of moments kept in charcoal gray.

* * *

"Listen," Tony sighs for the hundredth time. "I visit orphanages every month. The kids aren't about to assassinate me, Steve. They'll only give me mild food poisoning from their cooking."

Steve gives him a very unimpressed look. This dating while guarding Tony thing was becoming a logistical nightmare - mostly because of the guarding part, but also because Steve very understandably would like the man he adores to be kept safe. Which is difficult to do when said man insists on trying to escape Steve's watchful eye.

Part of Steve understands that Tony sometimes needs a break from him, which is why he had arranged rotating shifts with other agents. But this was his shift, and he's going to do his job to keep the world's most talented mind - and in his very objective opinion, the world's most wonderful man - as safe as possible.

"I'm perfectly happy to assign someone else to tail you today," Steve points out reasonably. "Also, food poisoning is a very serious thing, Tony. Remember when you were fourteen and we stole the - "

"The burnt chocolate chip cookies from the kitchen, yes. Might I remind you that we were _both_ vomiting, not just me."

Regardless, Steve insisted on coming along, escorting Tony through the orphanage's bright red door. After some more back and forths, Steve was finally allowed to enter Tony's latest bulletproof town car for a short ride to one of the orphanages Tony doted on.

He expects an adult to greet Tony, but is sorely mistaken. 

The pitter patter of small feet are drowned out by loud, excited yells, and Steve can't move because suddenly he's pestered with questions left and right.

"Who are you?" a girl with curly black hair glares at Steve.

"Are you Mister Tony's friend?" another girl wearing a reindeer sweater pokes at the edges of Steve's black suit, and he has no time to answer before a small boy tugs at Steve pants.

"You're not Mister Rhodey," the boy accuses, "did you steal Mister Rhodey?"

Tony, kneeling on the ground and trapped in a group hug with the children, laughs freely. "My favorite rascals, this is Mister Steve, and no. He didn't eat Mister Rhodey, but Mister Steve is strong so be careful."

"How strong?" the black-haired girl regards Steve with slightly less suspicion.

"Well, Miss Chavez, you know how I can only carry one of you at a time?" Tony waits until the girl nods. "Mister Steve can carry _three_ of you."

The other children flock even closer to Steve, questions of ' _really?_ ' and ' _prove it_ ' and ' _pick me_ ' clamor in the air until Tony seems to take mercy on Steve's increasing confusion. In Steve's defense, he was trained to carry bombs and shields, not kids who he could easily hurt.

"Now, Billy, leave poor Mister Steve alone," Tony waves one of the boys over. "Why don't we all move somewhere more comfortable?"

They trudge obediently along into an adjacent room, where bright letters and framed artwork adorn the walls. Upon closer inspection, the artwork displays crayon drawings with a mismatched vibrance that screams of innocence and dreams.

Steve understands why Tony would find refuge here, where all anyone asks of Tony is what his favorite color is.

No world-ending weapons, no demands for the latest invention to define the future.

Here, Steve realises, Tony can give to the children the attention Howard had overlooked, and the flame to spark their own brilliance.

He sees it in the way Tony's eyes shine with wonder at the children's ceaseless queries about the stars, the invisible atoms, the leaves outside, and the old band shirt Tony is wearing.

That is, until small Billy asks, "Mister Tony, how do you know Mister Steve?"

Tony blanches, before visibly seizing on the opportunity. "We went to school together," he sends Steve a shit-eating grin, "and he caught me stealing some flowers."

"Mister Tony," Billy frowns disapprovingly, "stealing is bad."

Sagely, Tony nods, ruffling the boy's hair. "And Mister Steve taught me that."

Miss Chavez, emboldened by her friend's forwardness, shuffles closer to the tiny chair Tony has claimed as his 'throne'. "Mister Steve looks like he's going to a party. Are we having a party?"

"It's always a party when there's you guys," Tony winks playfully, "but Mister Steve is actually working."

"Mister Steve is boring," Miss Chavez frowns. "Work is boring."

Tony takes a second to mouth those words rebelliously at Steve. ' _Work is boring_ '. Steve does his best to hide his smile. 

Seeing Tony as carefree as this was a rare treat, and if Steve was being entirely honest, he chose his bodyguard shifts to coincide with these visits.

' _Do you want children?_ ' felt like an extremely loaded question in their current exploration of how well they fit in this relationship, but Steve thinks he doesn't have to ask the question to know the answer: no.

Tony wouldn't trust himself to be a father, even if he had a heart large enough to fit the world. 

"Mister Steve is my guard," Tony explains more properly. "He makes sure I'm safe."

Billy perks up. "Like a guardian angel," the boy's eyes are wide as saucers, no longer suspicious of Steve.

This time, Steve can't hide the bark of laughter that escapes him, and the heat rising to his cheeks when Tony smirks. "Exactly like a guardian angel," Tony whispers conspiratorially at the children. "A very strong, very handsome, guardian angel."

"Can we keep Mister Steve?" Billy pleads.

"Tell you what, you let me keep my Steve, and I'll let you keep my Captain A-bear-ica," Tony fishes out a merchandise teddy bear sporting the A helmet and an American flag.

' _You're a little shit_ ,' Steve mouths at Tony, who mock gasps and mouths right back.

' _Language, Captain!_ '

Steve rolls his eyes, but his smile stays on, long after they take the car back to the mansion, and even after he finds his rest in Tony's perfectly large bed. 

* * *

"We are _not_ calling off this investigation," Peggy's fists are clenched tight, knuckles white in an effort to control her anger.

Obadiah Stane doesn't budge in his seat at the other end of the conference table, lounging back with an air of tired indifference. "Ms. Carter, you have found no solid evidence for black market arms dealing in Stark Industries. Whoever was involved in bringing the weapons into enemy hands must be a third party."

Guarding the door, Steve nearly winces at the hard edge to Peggy's reply, sharp enough to cut. "Someone put the heir to Stark Industries at risk."

"If I recall," Stane shifts his gaze towards Steve, lips twisted, "it was your agents who were responsible for safeguarding the unfortunate press conference last December."

"And if _I_ recall," Peggy taps her red-coated nails against the metal table, "it was your decision to pick the building and the room."

The words hang in the air for a while longer.

Steve itches to call Agent Morse for a confirmation that Tony is doing alright under her watch, delivering yet another speech at some obscure science conference. It's hard to let Tony out of sight when tensions run high like this, and even harder to hide the high tensions from Tony, who would only want to do his best to help. But having Tony's help would mean putting an even greater target on Tony's back.

Tracking the way Stane's hands clench into fists, rings glinting in the sunlight from the office windows, Steve does his best to keep his face a blank, impassive slate.

"Nothing good will come from digging deeper," Stane unclenches his hand.

Peggy smiles right back. "I'm not looking for good. I'm interested in the truth, Mr. Stane, and until you're willing to help me find it, we have enough shovels to keep piling the dirt on your front lawn."

With her gray hairs, it's easy to dismiss Peggy Carter as an old woman nearing irrelevance, but Peggy didn't rise to her position by sitting back, and she didn't keep her power by bending to lesser men. She holds Stane's gaze until Stane pushes his chair away from the table to stand.

"Stark Industries has always been a friend to the government," Stane slowly emphasizes.

"And has the government always been a friend to the people?"

"Ms. Carter, we have done our best to find the flaws that led to our missing weapons landing in enemy hands. You have no proof of systematic, high-level misconduct, only the amateur mistakes of interns."

"If it takes interns to make millions of dollars worth of weapons to disappear," Peggy raises her brow, remaining seated, back ramrod straight, "I daresay your company has serious need for reform."

"And I daresay you'll see some soon," Stane edges, "Howard will certainly take your advice to heart."

Howard's glaring absence adds another chasm between them. Their latest intelligence spotted Howard at a club on one of his private islands off in the Pacific. 

Peggy's standoff with Stane lasts a while longer before Peggy gives Steve the subtle gesture to allow Stane's departure.

The slightest upward tip of her lips tells Steve she's gotten what she wanted from this roundabout session: confirmation that Stane was spooked by the investigation for deeply _personal_ reasons outside of reasonable concerns for the company's reputation.

When that upward tip turns into a positively smug smile, Steve realises with sudden alarm that there's more to this than Stane.

Peggy spins her chair towards the door. "Now, Steve," she clasps her purse. "I know more than you think and less than you fear."

" _Should_ I be afraid?" Steve blinks.

She shrugs. "You're spending an awful lot of time with my godson. More than your assignment dictates."

Oh. _Oh._

"Peggy - "

Lifting one finger in the air, she shakes her head. "Tony adores you. I'm glad he has someone worthy of him looking out for his happiness."

That's... more mild than Steve expected, given how much Steve threatens to send askew by adding that extra layer of complications just for the sake of kissing Tony. In Steve's calculations, the heady rush of having Tony right next to him was worth it, but, "I don't - "

"I just need to know whether this will affect your ability to assess the facts of the mission," Peggy sternly cuts away all his excuses.

"I've found no incriminating evidence about Tony," Steve reports almost defensively. Then, with the full weight of reality, he adds, "but if you've found anything hinting at his... his guilt, I would - I would be able to act."

Peggy seems appeased at that, critically assessing the truth on Steve's face and the pain of his heart that must be echoed there. Finally standing up, her heels click at the small distance between them.

Patting Steve's shoulder, she places a hand on the door handle to keep it closed. "In any case, I've assigned Agent Wilson to the new Falcon project. He'll be our eyes in the skies for weapons movements in the desert."

Testing the waters more than he should, Steve nods. "And am I to keep my current assignment?"

"You are to shadow Tony as best as you can to his meetings with Howard Stark and Obadiah Stane."

And that's... she can't _possibly_ think Tony is in on this. "Peggy," he nearly pleads. All through the gruelling years of training, of receiving excruciating doses of the serum, never once had he broken to the strict discipline imposed by her. "I need to know. Do you suspect - "

"They're getting sloppy, Steve. And I'm growing too old and weary of betrayal."

This is a test. A test of how far Steve is willing to go, how far Steve's faith in the agency, in himself, in his friends goes.

He meets it with all his resolve. "I understand."

"Good." Peggy then gives him a softer smile. Real. Almost playful. "If you're wondering where to take Tony out to next week, there's an ice cream parlor off Park Avenue."

"Park Avenue. Next week," Steve repeats blankly.

Laughing, Peggy opens the door.

"Bring an umbrella in case it rains."

* * *

Park Avenue turns out to have the perfect ice cream and the innocuous SHIELD offices where Level Five Agent Nick Fury corners Steve with the flashdrive Tony had gotten from Pepper all those months ago.

"Miss Potts will need her own protection detail," Fury announces without preamble, "Agent Coulson will be in touch with her. They cannot know we have this."

He thinks of Tony enjoying coffee ice cream while Steve supposedly takes his time in the restroom.

"Of course," he replies quickly.

Fury stops him from hurrying back to his interrupted date. "We have reason to suspect that the attempt at the Ritz will be repeated." That's enough to perk Steve's full attention. "There's chatter, whispers of them trying to send a message to Stark Industries that they're tired of waiting for new weapons."

"We need to tighten security around the Mansion and the Malibu construction site," Steve immediately comes up with contingencies.

Strategy was his natural advantage, and a month after that meeting with Fury - when Sam is in deep shadow conditions monitoring the movement of weapons and Bucky is burrowing together with Nat closer to the source of these false trails - Steve continues to stay on high alert.

He insists on tailing Tony most of the time when his boyfriend isn't cooped up in the Mansion's basement workshop. When he spots the brown leaves signalling another turn of a season, however, Steve catches himself off guard.

Autumn means ten months since he started secretly dating his high school friend, and slightly over a year since their decade-long time apart ended. 

Old letters and old wounds and old friends.

Steve carefully watches Tony mingle with other heirs - and heiresses, in this case, Janet van Dyne. Tiberius Stone and Sunset Bain had been among the draft guest list to the private opening of the Met's latest art exhibition, as had Whitney Frost, but SHIELD's diversionary tactics were well-versed in keeping potentially catastrophic interactions at a minimum.

Even without the worst of the names on the list, however, there were still nuisances such as the young Justin Hammer who seemed keen on breaking up Tony's lively conversation with Miss van Dyne.

"Mr. Stark," Steve easily cuts in. His sharp black tux and customary earpiece made Steve no different from the other guards in the room, and it was crucial he stay unrecognised as Captain America. "Your lady mother was seeking your presence."

Tony gives him a sharply bewildered look. "My mother must be keeping Howard company. She needs no assistance from me." _And Howard definitely doesn't want me near_ , Tony's frown clearly says.

"I'd love to meet the legendary Howard Stark," Hammer chirps with overt cheer, "Tony, certainly you would - "

"Mrs. Stark is wearing one of my fashion line's latest pieces," Janet blessedly cuts in, "and we make a line for men too, Mr. Hammer."

A tight smile pasted on his face, Steve ushers Tony to a safer side of the room even as Tony looks back at Janet. "She's a _saint_."

"And Hammer is far from saintly," Steve adds.

"I can protect myself, you know."

He does know. He really does - has watched Tony protect himself since they were both too young and too foolish, using persistent guile and charm where Steve often preferred the brute force of stubborness.

"Doesn't mean I don't worry," Steve shrugs.

They're standing beneath Van Gogh's iconic self-portrait. The ocre strokes of the straw hat and the eternity of the man's gaze puts a startling perspective on the magnitude of Steve's fears. 

Genius and doubt and loneliness, the yearning for understanding, and the shining kindness amidst a defiant hope for the stars above. 

It was wrong to romanticise the man's suffering, but Steve turns to the man he loves, to the friend he has always adored and the person who had understood him when he needed it most: as a skinny young kid thrust into a school of children who felt heartless. There was an irony to how they both ended up right here, beneath this painting of a man who passed over a century ago because of wars with himself.

Tony runs a hand through his combed hair, sending Mr Jarvis' hard work on it down the drain. "Steve, if this recent wave protectiveness is over some sort of misplaced guilt, then you can stop it right now because nothing in this past year has been your fault. Not the Ritz, not this whatever it is going on with the company."

"It's not guilt," Steve argues. At least, not all of it.

"Then it means something's wrong and you haven't been telling me everything."

Even now, Tony understands Steve too well.

"We've settled it before that you can't know everything," Steve reminds him, eyes darting around to ensure they aren't being listened to. "You know I - I love you. I do. But there are things I can't tell you, no matter what, and we agreed on that." 

Affairs of the heart counted for little when there were things far, far larger than them at stake.

That, it seemed, was not acceptable to Tony, whose jaw tightens with displeasure. "If there are lives on the line," Tony hisses, voice low, "if there are lives on the line, I deserve to know. _Steve_ , those are _my_ weapons."

"Did you sell them illegally?" Steve challenges, meeting fire with fire.

Tony jerks back. " _No!_ " More soberly, "you can't really think I was responsible."

"No," Steve admits. Peggy might have suspected whatever she suspected, but Steve didn't. No amount of following Tony to meetings had shaken his doubt in Tony's innocence. "I meant that you might have made those weapons, but you're not to blame for them appearing where they aren't meant to appear."

"They shouldn't have appeared in the first place, I shouldn't have - "

"Mrs. Stark," Steve loudly greets, purposeful enough to stop Tony. Over Tony's shoulder, he's lucky he spotted Maria's approach before she heard snippets of their conversation, although less lucky when Howard approaches together with her. "Mr. Stark," Steve greets too.

"I know you," Howard slurs the slightest bit, one hand clutching at his whiskey. His twelfth tumbler of the night, if Steve's numbers didn't lie.

"Howard," Tony grits out. Then to Maria, a small smile. "Mother. I hope you're doing well tonight."

"Only as well as you," Maria reaches out to squeeze Tony's hand. "You've made quite an impression of yourself around here."

"And at long last it's a good impression," Howard grumbles, sending Steve's hackles up. No good would come of intervening right now, though, but Steve is close to throwing the greater good out of the door. 

A balancing act. He hasn't gotten it quite as well as Peggy could balance everything, but he doubts Peggy would manage to keep quiet either if this went on longer.

Pulling his hand away from Maria's, Tony's smile drops. "Glad to see you noticed something other than the open bar, Howard."

"You," Howard points at Steve, "you keep my boy in line."

"I keep him safe," Steve frowns. How far gone was Howard? Where was Agent May? She was meant to keep track of the elder Stark from spiralling this bad.

"Keep him safe from himself," Howard goes on despite Maria's subtle attempts at getting him to stop.

Steve can practically hear Tony's teeth grinding. "I'll thank you," Tony says with no small amount of bitterness, "to look at yourself in the mirror."

Seeing the spark of clarity in Howard's eyes is jarring, and the man's smile is empty, hollow. "I do," Howard tips the rest of the tumbler down. "My question is: can _you?_ "

Tony's face shutters. "Good night, mother."

"Good night, _Antonio._ " Maria's voice is small, sad, and Steve would be too if his family was this fractured. "We'll be flying out for Christmas."

"Have a safe trip," Tony ends any possibility of him coming along. "I'll see you at the New Year Gala."

Steve has no choice except to leave Maria with Howard and remember to later file a request for extra protection assigned to her. Howard Stark might hold legal ownership over the company, but it was Maria who held the fragile empire together.

"I'm sorry," Steve tries to say to Tony - sorry for not being able to protect Tony from Howard, sorry for leaving Tony behind all those years ago at the worst of it, sorry for not being able to wrap up the investigation faster.

Tony waves it away, ordering his own martini from the bar. "I know you can't tell me your secrets, I just - I need to not. To not." _To not be like Howard._

"You're not," Steve promises.

"If you say so."

"I do."

He knows Tony doesn't believe him.

* * *

They're lying tangled in bed when the news comes.

Steve's communicator buzzes, and he very reluctantly shifts out from under Tony's arm to reach for it.

"Hello?" he whispers, thankful that Tony was a heavy sleeper.

"Steve," Peggy's voice crackles over static, "we're calling off the investigation."

"What?"

They wouldn't be using this communicator for that sort of news. Usually, it was more urgent, more -

"Howard and Maria. The news hasn't broken yet, but - Steve. A car crash on the way to the airport." Even over the unstable line, Steve can hear Peggy's breath hitch. "No survivors."

He shoves a fist in his mouth to stop himself from waking Tony up. 

The pain grounds him. Focuses him. 

"Why stop the investigation?" he manages to whisper into the darkness of the bedroom.

"We don't know what or who caused the crash."

Steve glances at Tony's peaceful sleep, face slack with blissful rest. He's loathe to leave Tony alone, but he slips out of bed anyway to lessen the risk of waking Tony up.

"If we don't know, then we should find out," Steve argues, pacing the Mansion's empty corridors, not bothering with the lights.

"We don't want this to escalate," Peggy warns. "If this was a sabotage, then who knows who else they're prepared to take out to keep their secrets at bay."

"We can't just - I can't - "

He can't simply do _nothing_ while Tony's world shatters. 

Peggy's reply is soft. "You can. You must. We'll keep digging, in different places, in quieter ways."

A thought comes to mind, guilt and fear mixing. They hadn't been enough. They failed a hundred times over, from the Ritz to this.

"Do I have to be the one to tell Tony?" Steve stops his pacing.

Cowardly, but he doesn't trust himself to be able to give the news with the strong steadiness Tony deserves.

"We'll send someone else over," Peggy offers him a way out. "I have the crash site blocked out for the next four hours. No one else can know before Tony."

Nodding to himself, Steve has one last thing to say. 

"I'm not taking a reassignment."

"You were his friend before you were ever his protector. I won't take you away from him."

"Thank you," Steve says. "I became his protector when I became his friend."

"I'll send further instructions."

Her words are firm. This was her way of coping with her grief. Except -

"Peggy, you be careful too."

Some seconds of silence pass before Steve hears her sigh.

"Take care of Tony."

The call ends abruptly there.

Stranded between the floors of the Mansion, Steve stares through the pitch black at the end of the corridor.

Going back to bed with Tony was an option, but Steve doesn't think he'll be able to sleep, or to even touch Tony when a secret this big was wedged between them.

Instead, he makes his way down to the workshop, presses in the security code, and makes his way to the sketchbook he left on the couch there.

When had he given up art to paint with blood? 

Steve thinks of his Ma, who must be sleeping as peacefully as Tony right now, and he thinks of Maria Stark -

No. 

It makes Steve sick to the stomach. If it had been his Ma who was -

Good _God_.

 _This is not about you_ , Steve has to remind himself.

Process the information. Internalise the important pieces.

Compartmentalise.

Steve breathes.

He lets the feel of rough paper beneath his fingertips calm him, and the sounds of DUM-E beeping away at his charging station are familiar enough to pull him out of his thoughts.

He has to calm himself.

Tomorrow, the storm begins.


	5. Tony - 1997-1998

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the wake of Howard and Maria's death, Tony makes some choices, discoveries, and sacrifices.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one's a rough one after the fluff, but i hope everyone's doing alright, and staying safe in this new year :)

Glinting bright in his palm, he stares at his mother's wedding ring.

Ostentatious as ever, the diamond stares back up at him. There isn't even a fleck of blood left on it, even though it had been covered in red when Tony had been called up to - to identify their bodies.

Howard and Maria Stark. December 16, 1997. Two weeks ago.

Tomorrow is the new year, and there are no galas, no parties, not when the world mourned and the country grieved the loss of a national hero.

He barks out a harsh laugh, tipping back the tumbler of scotch, considering the rest of the bottle.

The government was upset that Stark Industries would be undergoing a leadership change, not mourning Howard or Maria.

 _Mama_ , a small childish voice in him wants to cry. But he's cried enough tears over her, and he has no grief over Howard. Only a strange emptiness that left him adrift.

Gone was the old man. And yet, what did that leave Tony with? The crown to an empire of scrap metal tinged with death.

He doesn't wince when the diamond digs into his palm.

"Tony?" Steve's blurry blob of a face appears, "Tony, let me get you to bed. You need your rest."

"I don't want bed," Tony rasps out. He wants - he had another ring made: similar to Maria's but more understated, one small diamond embedded in a golden band. A star to shine on Steve's hand, an anniversary gift with a promise of more years to come.

Their anniversary was supposed to be four days ago. Until that became the day that Tony had to sign himself in as CEO, and he had kept the ring locked in its vault, because while he once was sure he could be happy with Steve, he doesn't know if Steve would be happy with him.

"Hey," Steve's far too gentle hand cups his cheek, "don't let your mind wander off too far. Why don't you breathe with me?"

Missing weapons, a malfunctioning car crash, demands for new designs - Tony doesn't - "I don't need to breathe," he snaps. "I need time. I need Pepper. I need to buy that goddamned car company because no more. No more deaths because of their shitty mechanics."

"We haven't found proof that their broken braking system was responsible for the crash."

"She didn't know I forgave her."

"What?"

"I never told her - " Tony hears his own voice break, "I never told her I forgave her." _Mama_ , he thinks. There is so much he should have done.

Steve squeezes his shoulder. "She knew."

"I'm sending the Jarvises away. They shouldn't be caught in the crossfire." He doesn't know why he's admitting this to Steve, except for the fact that Tony has more scotch in his blood than is healthy right now. He can't take Steve's careful touches, or the hushed footsteps of the Board of Directors, the worried whispers between Pepper and Rhodey.

Why does he feel so numb?

"Okay," Steve uncurls Tony's empty fist, thumb rubbing over the crescent moons on his palm left by his fingernails, "they'll be safe. I promise."

"Didn't you promise to keep all of us safe?"

It isn't meant to be an accusation: he's only trying to figure out where everything went messed up.

The brakes of the car, the flawed system of protection, the manufacturers letting weapons slip. This is his mess to fix, now.

Working is more useful than grieving. More useful than resting.

There is so much he should have done, so much he has to do.

* * *

December bleeds away to January, then the Winter into Spring, and Tony feels even more powerless. Every night that Steve tries to lure Tony into bed, Tony will lie awake until he's sure Steve is deep asleep, and he builds a shower in the workshop to wash the sex off him, shrugging on a ratty shirt to start hammering away at his projects.

With Edwin and Ana Jarvis off in their _very_ secluded retirement at a very pleasant cottage, Tony is left to expanding JARVIS' capabilities, testing out new hologram design technologies, and scrapping all the voicemails Pepper leaves him. He's overhauled the car company that built his parent's last car, made a mini AI to add extra controls to their braking systems and ramped up their fuel efficiency.

When night fades into morning and Steve invariably finds him with darkening bags under his eyes, he can't find it in himself to feel guilt, because there were many things he regretted, but this? This was him trying to fix everything. Steve - the traitor - calls Rhodey home, somehow getting Rhodey permanently assigned as Stark Industries' military liaison.

Which is bad. 

Tony wants Rhodey far, far away when this clusterfuck eventually explodes, and this liaison thing was going to slow down the man's career.

Getting Steve far away was also necessary, but that was another mountain Tony doesn't have the energy to climb. Maybe he's too selfish to try.

Either way, he's scrambling for something to hold onto, and he has a sinking feeling that when Steve snaps, Tony will break with him.

He starts to understand _why_ Howard had wanted to drink - or at least, the usefulness of having that as a cover. 

Pretend to drink, laugh a bit, stumble out of the party early, then tip back a cup of scalding coffee to get back to work because parties were a waste of time that Tony doesn't need.

Giving Steve his first smartphone was weird. Granted, Tony was in his thirty second hour without sleep, but the worry creasing Steve's brows wasn't good. 

"I'm launching a new line of products," Tony rubs the back of his hand hard against his eyes to stay awake. "It'll be cheap. Clean. The best of the best."

"Tony, you're running yourself ragged," Steve pleads for what must be the thousandth time. "You need to rest."

He actually feels himself smile at that, irony sending a frisson of amusement. "I don't know how."

Steve's kisses aren't enough anymore. 

They don't chase away the fear or the guilt or the worry. His _Mama_ was dead. People expected him to run a billion-dollar company. Senators were calling him about the war in the East, and Obie was... difficult.

No amount of dodging or hiding could stop Obie from finding him, and find him Obie does in the basement of the nearly finished Malibu Mansion. Mid-April means deadlines for the quarterly financial report, which Pepper was meant to handle, but which of course showed the company wasn't doing as well as before Howard's death.

Investors simply didn't trust the young Tony Stark to be the CEO, especially not when Tony was cultivating a reputation for drunkenness. 

Another day, another disappointment. 

Another headache for Tony to deal with, and more heartache than he knows how to solve.

“Do you really think I couldn’t file an injunction against you, Tony?” Obie paces the large length of the basement, pausing to rap his knuckles against the wooden crates housing Tony's unpacked workshop equipment.

"Do you really think SI will survive without me, Obie?"

"You're not going to be the hotshot genius forever, Tony. There are others who will - "

"Others?" Tony scoffs. "Justin Hammer? His tech is laughable. Viastone Inc.? Ty has no wit to keep his dreams afloat."

"Then let me ask you this, Tony: why haven’t you shown your Steve to the world? Are you afraid of something? Are you afraid he won’t stay when he knows the truth about your life? About _our_ lives?”

 _That_ is enough to make Tony's hackles truly rise. Is Obie really doing this? “We like our privacy.”

“Men like us don’t get privacy, Tony," Obie walks closer. "Men like us don't get to have foolish dreams like Ty Stone. And it would be so easy for me to find secrets against your boyfriend. Did you know his father was an alcoholic?”

Yes, Tony did know about Joseph Rogers, and it was why despite public appearances of seeming drunk, he had stopped himself from actually drinking in private. His heart felt hollow, but there was enough space to hear Steve's fears.

“You don’t get to threaten Steve because you want my weapons,” Tony goes straight to the heart of this game, tired of beating around the bush.

“ _You_ don’t get it, Tony. Stop this right now. We’ve always made weapons.”

“We can make other things. More profitable, Obie. I promise.”

Obie comes even closer, almost towering over him. “I understand your grief and the idealism of youth, but and what will you say to the government? What will - "

Tony stands his ground. “We can win the war without weapons.”

Clearly, Obie doesn't enjoy his answer, and he lights up a cigar right there, the smoke puffing in Tony's face. “Let me make this very clear: you make weapons, or you give up Steve Rogers. There was a reason why Howard chose Maria. And it wasn’t because Maria was pretty.”

“You can’t ask me to do that.”

Obie was supposed to be on Tony's side.

“I can. I want what’s best for all of us. Including Steve." A pause, another puff of smoke. "Tony, you remember what your mother was like at the end of it, don’t you? Do you want that for Steve?”

Damn him. 

Damn Obie and how much he knew about Tony. This is why Tony hates family. Why he wishes he could tear down everything.

“No,” Tony admits, because it's the truth. even now, he can see the strain that his crusade is putting on Steve: the late nights and the ever-present worry when their dinner dates inevitably get cut short.

But it isn't the whole truth.

Obie's hand lands on Tony's shoulder. “Then you know what you have to do. For all of us. For you. For Steve.”

Bullshit. 

Tony called bullshit on that. There was nothing that Tony _had_ to do. He could keep Steve _and_ not make weapons. But he believed that Obie – _Stane_ – would actually go so far to hurt Steve.

"I do, Obie," Tony thinks of Aunt Peggy and her SHIELD. "I do."

* * *

Sarah Rogers hugs Tony as soon as she opens her door for him.

"My _dearest_ boy," Sarah presses a kiss on Tony's cheek. "I'm so sorry."

"You have nothing to be sorry for." He had to be quick about it. No time for grief or the bitter aftertaste of regret, because Steve doesn't know he's here.

"Then let me at least give you something to be happy for, hmm?" Sarah points to the old couch for Tony to sit on, which he gratefully does as she putters in the kitchen to get a plate of cookies.

"This is too much, Mrs. Rogers," Tony swallows back his memories of Maria serving tea to her guests. Or at least, Jarvis serving tea for her, and her sneaking some onto Tony's plate. 

"I heard Mr. Jarvis is enjoying a peaceful retirement," Sarah says amicably.

"Nothing too peaceful. I gave him some hens and flamingos to take care of - I'm afraid peace isn't quite Jarvis' forte," Tony tells her.

"I also heard Steve spends his nights alone in bed."

Biting his lips, Tony shrugs. "He'd be jealous to know you called me your dearest."

"Steve could never be jealous of you, you know that." Sarah settles on the couch, next to him, pressing a warm mug of milk into Tony's hands. "Why did you _really_ come over?"

"I wanted to make sure you were alright," he feels his smile crack. _I have too many debts I can't pay, too many people I can't stand to lose_.

Sarah tips her head sideways, clearly indulging him. "My son is no longer an asthmatic with too many health problems to list, and he's dating the sweetest man I could ever dream of. I'm more than alright."

"I don't want to put you or Steve in danger."

"Nobody puts anybody in danger, dear. It's more a question of whether Steve and I _choose_ to stay even with the danger there."

"Risk can be minimalised," Tony drums his fingers on the side of the mug, jittery and half-afraid. He knows about choice and the futility of it. "Danger can be controlled for. Nobody chooses to _die_."

"Uncertainty can't be erased."

Nudging at Tony's side with her elbow, Sarah gives Tony's wrist a squeeze.

He can't save everybody, but he can do something. Placing the mug carefully on top of the pile of mail on the coffee table, he reaches inside his suit to take out a flashdrive.

"I wanted to give you this," he says.

"I wouldn't know how to use it, dear."

"For safekeeping," he insists. "If you ever need help, if Steve ever - " that thought didn't bear thinking, "plug it into the nearest computer and it'll do the rest."

Sarah slots her hand over Tony's, the reinforced casing of the flashdrive pressing into their palms. "I'm taking it only to give you peace of mind. And if _you_ ever need me, you know where to find me."

"I'm sorry," Tony confesses, holding onto her hand for an absolution he doesn't know where else to find. "For the bomb at the Ritz putting Steve in danger. For making Steve work twenty-four-seven and keeping him away from you. For - "

"My Stevie was always made for war, never giving up what he believed was right. If he chose you, then I trust that his heart knows what it believes."

 _I'm sorry_ , Tony wants to say, _for needing to break your son's heart to keep him safe._

"Steve likes to rush into things," he argues instead.

"He grew up with you, has known you for more than a decade. I doubt anyone would call that rushing."

"You're too kind."

"I'm a nurse, dear," Sarah smiles, all too knowing, "it's in my bones to heal."

* * *

The New York brownstone is the same as it ever was. Slamming the Audi's door shut, Tony takes a cursory glance around to ensure that he's lost his tail yet again.

He needs the full story, and he's _getting_ it.

Steve's blond head makes no appearances, though, and the beta version of JARVIS on his newest phone detects no one unusual in the area. 

Going into this silent war of wills with Obie meant that any blindness in his part could be a deadly stumbling block. Being protected had gotten Tony nowhere, being protected had only gotten Maria killed - whether by Howard or a malfunctioning car or outside interference, it doesn't matter.

She was dead. 

And Tony will be damned if he lets anyone else die.

"Aunt Peggy," he doesn't bother with pleasantries, "I need everything from your investigation on my parents' accident."

"You know I can't give you everything," she calmly boils water in her kitchen.

He lifts himself on top of the kitchen counter, feet dangling off its edge. "You can give me the _truth_. Were they really going out to the airport for a Christmas getaway? Was the road really empty? Did Howard really drink that much before - before the accident?"

"Tony, don't go down that path. There's no crusade for you to chase."

"She was my mother!" Tony's voice breaks at the end, making it more a hushed whisper than an angry shout. "You promised to keep us safe and - "

"And I did my duty," Peggy turns away from the kettle to meet him with her steely gaze. "I kept my promise to your father, and I made sure their final will was held."

"I don't need to be protected. I need to fix this, I need to know if somehow my parents had to be buried because you thought it necessary to dig through the company's dirt."

The shrill sound of the kettle boiling interrupts them, and Peggy takes it to pour the water into a teapot. She shuffles her way to the old radio in the corner, flicking it on.

Mariah Carey's _All I Want for Christmas_ plays on full volume, blasting incorrigibly through the entire room.

"Dance with me," Peggy demands, pulling him off the counter with more strength than an old woman should have. Her hand lands on Tony's waist, and she pulls them close enough to whisper. "Hail HYDRA."

Tony jerks back, frowning. "What?"

Her fingernails dig into Tony's arm. "Hail HYDRA."

"Aunt Pegs, I don't understand how a Greek monster has anything to do with - "

"Oh, thank _god_ ," her grip on him loosens. "I didn't suspect, but I had to - I have to be sure."

"Sure of what?"

The song loops back to it's beginning, bells chiming and the radio belting out ' _I don't want a lot for Christmas, there's only one thing I need_ ' _._ It's ironically apt for the situation, and Peggy's lips twitch up despite everything. 

"There's an organisation that SHIELD was founded to eliminate, your father worked with Doctor Erskine to create a supersoldier army in hopes it would be enough to stop them," she keeps them swaying to the music, the words urgent in his ear.

"Steve," Tony whispers back, the pieces falling into place.

"Who did you think gave Steve the scholarship to receive the best education?" Peggy confirms. "He went to school with you because he was to be the _best_."

"What happened to the supersoldier army?"

"Doctor Erskine was shot by HYDRA. Steve is the only one."

"Then why was Steve protecting _me?_ " Tony demands.

"Because Howard wanted him to. Howard was slipping away, driven to paranoia by enemies he couldn't see," her hand rises to Tony's shoulder, its weight settling there, "and he wanted to protect his legacy."

"I was never his legacy," Tony hisses, old bitterness seeping back up through the cracks of wounds he isn't sure will ever heal. "He wanted better than me."

"Perhaps not. Or perhaps yes. Perhaps you are the future he never had the wisdom to imagine," Peggy spins them both through the kitchen, edging them further away from the window. "He wanted you safe, for whatever reason, and HYDRA wants you alive because no one else can make the weapons you do."

"But this - this HYDRA is growing impatient," Tony fills in the blanks, rolling his eyes when the song loops back once again.

"We don't know if your father's accident was an honest accident, or a message of their brazenness, of their growing power."

"You know that they had something to do with the missing weapons, though, the evidence Pep found - "

Peggy shakes her head. "We don't know who to trust to do justice with the evidence, and we need our own arsenal of tech to keep HYDRA at bay."

Tony pushes himself out of her hold to press next on the radio, changing the song into a less happy tune and ramping up the volume even more. The cheerfulness of Christmas songs in the middle of summer was far too much on his sanity.

"You want me to keep to making weapons," his hand curls into a fist. "You want me to stay out of it, but you want me to keep making weapons for SHIELD."

"I want you to stay safe. To not make any ripples that would draw attention to you."

"And in the meantime, you would have me ignore the people who may have killed my mother?"

" _May_ have," Peggy emphasizes, closing the gap between them. "Tony, you won't find closure by burning down everything."

"I won't find closure by doing nothing."

He storms out of the kitchen, the words ringing in his head, and he has to sit, heaving in heavy breaths inside his car before he feels steady enough to drive. JARVIS' speaker on the phone blasts out rock songs to drown out the loop of Christmas songs jingling in his head.

The evening traffic won't be pleasant to navigate.

Steve's ire when he comes home late, without any guards tailing him, will be even less pleasant.

Tony keeps his foot on the brakes.

Good. It'll give them another reason to fight, and with each fight, it'll give Steve another reason to leave Tony. 

HYDRA. The supersoldier program. Stolen weapons. 

They were a tangled web he had to unravel.

Tony, however, had always been good at cutting wires, and before he starts the car, he types in an extra line of code into JARVIS through his phone.

"J, it's time for you to wake up, buddy."

He misses the human Jarvis, but the Jarvises are safe in their retirement hideout and this JARVIS is just as real. 

More importantly, JARVIS is far less prone to bullet wounds or car crashes.

* * *

"Come to bed," Steve hovers by the workshop door, leaning on the tower of boxes shoved in the hallway.

Tony wants to. He really wants to.

He also really wants to speak with his mother.

"Can't," Tony unscrews another bolt from the remnants of his rudimentary holotable. There'll be time enough to improve it when he gets to Malibu. "I've got to pack this all up."

Footsteps slow on the marble tile, Steve walks inside, taking the thirteen long strides to reach Tony. "Then let me help."

That was... that was a first. Tony flicks his gaze up to the shadows under Steve's eyes, the crease between his brows that seemed ever-present these days.

This was what Tony was doing to a perfectly good man. To a supersoldier who wasn't supposed to be exhausted.

"I'll go to bed soon. Give me fifteen minutes."

"You said that to me two hours ago."

"Did I?" Tony moves on to the next bolt, letting the work distract him from the guilt. He hates having to push Steve away, but after what JARVIS found on HYDRA?

No more casualties. Tony had to keep that promise.

"You did," Steve replies quietly. "And no one is asking you to move to LA."

 _I can't stay here. Too many ghosts, and too many regrets._ "Stark Industries has a new factory there," Tony flicks the bolt into the growing pile inside the next box. "It was the last one Howard made."

"I thought you wanted to stop its weapons production."

"It'll be powered by a large arc reactor."

"You know these games don't work," Steve says. "Not with me."

"I'm not making any waves, Steve. I'm - " _Hacking the Pentagon, digging into SHIELD, playing the long game_."I'm giving the stability that Obie says it needs."

"Obie?"

Suspicion drips from Steve's voice, and it's funny how one word from Steve is enough to reach into the heart of the matter, into the heart beating hard in Tony's chest.

Steve is standing close, so, so close.

It would be too easy to let his tools clatter on the floor, lean into the familiar comfort of those strong arms, and breathe in the same scent of _home_ he had felt safe in as a lost child looking for a rock in a sea of lies.

But he isn't a child anymore.

He has to be stronger than that, and he walks away from Steve, pretending to check on DUM-E's charging port. "You know what?" he raises his tone, "I'm too tired for this argument."

"Then come to bed," Steve huffs. "Rest. Sleep."

"I can't," Tony snaps.

"Why not?"

Always pushing, always knowing Tony's limits, why can't Steve let things go? Why must he be so stubborn?

"Because I see their faces!" Tony whirls around, clenching tight around the wrench in his hand. "I think about what or who might've killed them, and how I could've made something to protect them." The truth. This was the truth he could give Steve. "Do you know what it's like - to be called the smartest person in the world, and yet somehow I'm not smart enough to realise my parents' car had broken brakes? Somehow I'm not smart enough, rich enough, to save my own mother?"

"Tony - "

"And I think about how I could lose you too and - "

"I heal faster than people. I'm Captain America."

"That doesn't mean you can't die!" Tony yells again, and it feels good in a twisted way, letting his pent up frustrations be heard, because _goddammit_ , Steve, just this once. Just this once, can't Steve run away from a fight? "Especially if they make the connection between Captain America and Steve Rogers and the shield."

"I know you visited my Ma and Peggy. Whatever it is you're planning - "

"And the fact that I slipped from your spies doesn't really speak well about them now, does it?"

If Steve knows where to dig to get under Tony's skin, then Tony knows intimately which the fractures to press on in Steve's armor. The way Steve jerks back minutely, almost imperceptibly, is jarring. 

Making Steve afraid - perhaps even disgusted - of him wasn't the purpose, especially when he still loves Steve so much it hurts, and yet Tony is quickly realising there isn't any other way to push Steve away from this war on HYDRA.

"You're always planning something, Tony," Steve forges on with his mule-headedness, "and I can't seem to talk with you lately. I can't spend more than five minutes with you." Once again, he approaches Tony, this time going as far as to loosen Tony's grip around the wrench, Tony unable to be anything other than pliant when Steve touches him that gently. "I want to help," Steve pleads. "Just tell me how."

Thermodynamics.

Physics at its most basic.

Wood has its own fuel: organic methane. Heat it up hot enough, and it would decompose its own self in the heat, burning bridges to smoke and ash.

Old wounds reopened, Tony just has to find the strength to add fire to the fuel, to do the final hit to shatter fractures he had once kissed, to cut open scars he had once helped Steve heal from.

"Steve, I - "

Not tonight, though. Tony lets out a long breath.

"Tony?"

He'll let himself have this for one more night.

Leaning his forehead on Steve's shoulder, he lets Steve drop a kiss on the crown of his head.

"I'll come to bed in fifteen minutes," he mumbles into Steve's shirt.

This time, Steve believes him. 

* * *

Three weeks.

One more night somehow stretched into three weeks.

He's clinging to the last dregs of their blissful year sneaking around for clandestine dates and finding rest in each other's breaths, before his world had come crashing down and he was made CEO by force.

Three weeks was stretching the rope thin, however, and Tony knows it _has_ to end soon, especially now that he's in Malibu and Peggy has taken to assigning Tony a rotation of bodyguards that are never Steve.

"She has a recon mission for me," Steve had zipped up his bag two nights ago. "I'll be back in five days, if everything goes smooth."

Without Steve's hovering, it is much easier to put the rest of his plans in action. He had planned on promoting Pepper from PA to Head of HR or Accounting, but if he wants her safe, he needs to keep her unnoticed and near him where he can watch over her.

Next, he needs to start getting people to underestimate him.

Better that they never realise the full extent of JARVIS, so he makes a limited AI to install in all the company's tech, monitoring all data inputs and the flow of the production line. 

MARIA is his Mostly Accurate Remote Intelligence Assistant, a name which the Marketing guys hated but sent the Board of Directors into tittering laughter as Tony winks at Obie and tips back another glass of champagne.

He meets with Peggy again to reach a mutual understanding with her. Weapons of defense for SHIELD, in return for intel about the rot creeping into Stark Industries, the missing accounts that show up sporadically, flagged by MARIA and analysed by JARVIS.

Rhodey is another challenge: he pulls strings in the Air Force to add to his friend's security clearance, upping the standards of safety uniforms, and unsubtly telling JARVIS to keep a constant monitor, just as the new factory in LA keeps secret track of where each of his weapons are.

Which is how he's figured out where Steve is.

Most likely, somewhere in the middle of the Sahara, where Tony's latest missiles have gone astray from their natural shipping route.

Tony had meant it when he told Steve he would keep better track of his killing machines, and he strides into the vast expanse of the Malibu Mansion's workshop, heading for his reassembled holotable.

"Hey, J, point our Homer Project satellites at the desert? I want a visual of the convoy."

"Certainly, sir. Shall I also provide a visual of Captain Rogers' silhouette?"

"What was I thinking when I programmed sarcasm into you?" Tony crosses his arms.

"I don't believe you were thinking."

And that was the point, wasn't it?

Tony was too busy loving, too busy desperately stopping death that time feels like it's slipping between his fingers like sand.

He's clawing his way out, but every time he thinks he finds a grip, he loses it.

The holotable lights up with an image of a gray cloud, mushroom shaped over the flat dunes of sand.

His lips twist up.

A safety switch. If anyone but the original intended buyer tried to use his weapons, MARIA made sure to rig the weapon to blow as soon as she detects unpopulated land.

"They want weapons?" Tony smirks. "I'll give them weapons. A stick so big they won't be able to lift it, so big it'll fall over their heads and flatten them to dust."

It's a violent solution that Steve won't like.

Blowing up weapons wouldn't erase the groups who bought the weapons, but it was a way to keep the weapons out of the wrong hands, to at least break a link in the chain of death he was causing.

He has to do it, and if it means Steve will hate him for it, then it's a price Tony has to pay.

* * *

"You don't have to go."

Tony considers that, buttoning down his dress shirt. Red, because he wants to be ostentatious, with gold buttons because that is what they'd expect out of a spoiled heir with his father finally gone.

Let them underestimate Tony. 

"I have to go," he tells Steve, who came back home only two nights ago. "If you don't want to go, I've got three other SHIELD agents happy to tail me."

Pulling out his cufflink drawer, he watches from the mirror as Steve fiddles with one of the tubes on the vanity. "Tony, I don't understand what you're trying to do." Steve puts down the tube with a loud thud, strength too much. "You drink, but you _don't_ drink. You say you're trying to move to clean energy but you keep building weapons. You tell me to come home safe, but when I get home I can't seem to find you."

"This isn't working," Tony quietly says. Maybe if he does it quietly, it doesn't have to hurt too much. "You and me, it can't work."

In the mirror, Steve's head jerks up. "Are you - you're breaking up with me."

A statement, not a question. Steve does know him best.

"I'm sorry."

"If you wanted me to go away, you could've told me," Steve grits out. "If you were unhappy with me, you could've told me why."

"It's not you, it's - "

"You don't get to use that line on me, Tony."

Tony knows he's being unfair. He knows he's being cowardly. He doesn't know how to stop.

"Steve, I - I need to get my head on right. I need - not to break up with you," he backtracks on his plan. "Just a break." For around a year, until Tony figures out this HYDRA mess and deals with it. "Give me time."

Steve visibly considers that for a moment. The silence heavy in the air, he eventually walks towards Tony, picking out a small box from the drawer. "I'll always be your friend before anything else," Steve takes Tony's wrist and attaches the simple square cufflinks. "That means whether we're dating or not, I'll always worry about you."

"Don't," Tony feels himself cracking, " _don't_."

"When I fought the war in the desert, all those years without your letters, I worried for you. I worried you don't get enough sleep. I worried that you fight with Howard," Steve attaches the cufflink on Tony's other wrist, thumb brushing over smooth silk. "Worrying doesn't help much, and if you really need me to leave, if that would really help, I'd do it in a heartbeat."

"Steve, I - "

"But I've known you since before you could lie properly," Steve smiles, sad. "And I know leaving won't help."

Tony wants to say something, anything. To lash out, to hurt Steve so he'll stay away from the ticking time bomb, to hold onto Steve because he has always been Tony's shield, Tony's refuge. 

Except, the bedroom's lights shine brighter and knuckles rap on the open door. "Tony. Steve," Obie greets them both, already dressed sharply in a matching suit.

He steps away from Steve, slamming the drawer shut with a final thud. "Obie, I just finished. Are we taking separate cars?"

"One car should be enough. They're waiting for us at the gala, and the earlier we come, the more money for charity," Obie leans on the doorframe, thoughtfully knocking on its metal. "I like what you've done with this cliff. They're calling this place the Malibu Mansion in the papers."

"An architectural impossibility," Tony shrugs. "A piece of cake. This is much warmer than New York, anyways, and much nearer to the hot parties."

"Don't be so arrogant, boy," Obie laughs, tipping his head towards Steve. "Captain Rogers, will you be joining us?"

Tony freezes, and when Steve says, "no," it feels hollow.

Obie drapes his hand over Tony's shoulder. "Well then, Captain, I promise to return Tony in good shape."

"Have a good night," Steve gives his soft farewell.

Tony doesn't dare look back. 

* * *

Everything comes to a head in September.

With pushing and pulling and renegotiating old government contracts, the item slips out of Tony's mind long enough that it's too late by the time he returns to it. 

Because Steve is sitting at the edge of their bed, the paper in his hands reading out in bold letters: _Terms of Weapon Sales Contract, United States Department of Defense_.

There are details in the agreement that weren't supposed to come out. Paralysing devices, remote-launch precision missiles, wide-range landmines. The weapons Tony had once tried to prevent from being made, the ones he now wants to fall into the wrong hands for the sake of having MARIA track them and blow them up. 

"Tony, this is madness. Whatever it is you're planning - "

"Is none of your business," Tony marches forward and rips the paper out of Steve's hand, tearing it to shreds and letting it fall on the bedroom floor. He's just had a very tiresome meeting at the LA Regional Headquarters about production quotas going wrong, he's not going to let this sales contract he precisely curated go wrong too.

Steve stands, feet stepping over the shreds. "You asked for space. I gave you space."

"And I appreciate it," Tony keeps his face carefully blank, feeling the mounting tension.

"But it _is_ my business when my friend decides to do something ridiculously stupid."

This is it, Tony realises. He wanted to push Steve away, and this is the breaking point, where he needed one last push to send the cracks crumbling.

"Why do you care so much?" he challenges, half needing to know, half afraid of the answer, the avalanche.

“Because I know the man I loved!” Steve roars.

Tony stares at him, and Steve has the grace to look berated.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have shouted," Steve says in a more level tone, "but the man I fell in love with would never have signed that contract.”

Tony juts his chin out, another mask falling into place over his heart. He has to be strong, because this is the only way he knows how to keep Steve safe. “You don’t know who I am.”

Steve scoffs, disbelieving and heartbroken, and Tony wishes he didn’t have to do this. Wishes he didn’t have to choose between happiness and keeping Steve safe. Wishes he didn’t have to lie like this.

“The little boy who was quiet and scared but who offered to be brave for another scared boy? That’s who I fell in love with,” Steve tells him. “The kind, brilliant young man who believed he could change the world, who believed everyone else could too?” he lets out a bitter laugh. “That’s who I stayed in love with.”

Tony sucks in a ragged breath, and Steve pauses, considerate as ever even in anger.

The three feet between them feel vaster than the universe itself, a chasm growing larger and larger that neither of them can cross anymore, all their bridges burned and rotted.

When Tony makes no other sound, Steve takes another step away.

“But this man you’ve become?” Steve finishes with none of his earlier bitterness. Only an aching tiredness that echoes itself in the hollows of Tony’s heart. “I don’t know who you are or who you’re pretending to be. I just know that the Tony Stark I loved would never have let this happen. And I know that _that_ Tony is still there.”

It hurts because Steve knows Tony so well. Because Steve is desperately seeing through the lie and succeeding.

“You _left me!_ ” Tony hurls back at him, trying to prod at old wounds to burn their bridges even more. “I begged you to stay and you didn’t.”

With anyone else, the bitter anger might have worked. But Steve remains infuriatingly stubborn. His nostrils flare, and he asks Tony, "did Obadiah put you up to this?"

"Obadiah?" Tony frowns, "no. This is all me."

Steve nods once. Outside, the waves crash. In the sudden silence, they crash loud against the cliff, chipping away at it inch by inch. “When you’ve changed the world," Steve meets Tony's eyes with a terrifying resolve, "don't call me."

“I won’t,” Tony fights against the sting in his eyes. This is for Steve. This is to keep Steve safe.

"When you’ve found somebody who makes you brave enough to love yourself, don’t call me. Don’t write me letters. Don’t try to find me.” 

"I _won't_ ," Tony hisses.

“If you’re happy, I don’t want to hear about it," Steve lets out a ragged breath, fists clenched at his sides, back straight. A soldier facing adversity. "And if you’re getting married, I don’t want to see it. I can't, I can't say goodbye to you again – but. But if you need somebody and there’s no one else to turn to," Steve turns to their bedside drawer, where a sketch of them by Steve was framed, "if you need a friend, if you come through a rainy patch and you need a shield, you can always find me.”

“Fuck you," Tony curses, biting the inside of his cheek hard to ground himself, "damn you to hell. You can’t – that’s not fair.”

“Nothing ever is. But it’s the truth. We were children and you were there when I had no one else,” Steve puts down the picture frame, opening the drawer to toss his items on the bed - a notebook, dog tags, an old burner phone. "You want me to leave? I'll leave. You want me to come back? It better be because you need me. Not because you want to lie to me again."

"For the record," Tony keeps his head held high, "I love you."

"Not enough, it seems, to want me around," Steve concludes with finality.

 _Enough_ , Tony wants to explain, to take back all the bitter words, _enough to let you go._

_Enough to want you to spend time with your mother who misses you, not waste it on me._

_Enough to want you to live._

"No," Tony answers, "not enough."

Because, at the end of the day, he isn't selfish enough to keep Steve.

* * *

"JARVIS," Tony says into the silence of the workshop, unable to bring himself to go back to the bedroom devoid of any trace of Steve, "track him. If Steve gets so much as a papercut, I want to know."

"Sir, are you sure that's healthy?"

He laughs bitterly. "No one's around to care anymore. Just don't let Steve know what I'm doing."

"I'm sure Miss Potts and Major Rhodes would disagree."

"I'm sure I made a mistake teaching you sarcasm."

"Sir."

Tony sighs. "JARVIS."

"You have me."

He hadn't cried at his parents' funeral.

Not when he had sent Edwin Jarvis away, nor when Steve had driven off.

But now?

Now, he thinks he just might.


	6. Steve - 2008

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's 2008, and Steve goes on a mission to find a missing person. He finds some other things, too - including a ring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you guys are doing alright 💕 things are going to escalate from here, so get ready ;)

The newspaper stand has another magazine with Tony's face splashed across it.

Another day, another new missile. Another leap into the future.

Steve wishes he had a coat to wrap around himself. Singapore's humid weather means he's wearing a light jacket, but he longs for the sense of safety that comes with warm coats in a cold winter.

He skips the newspaper stand. 

All that's important about Tony is in his head already - the rest of the scandals, rumors and indiscretions are not for Steve to think about.

More than ever, Steve is glad the world has been told that Captain America has retired, that his identity remains a secret. He still has faith for his country, but he doesn't think he can be Captain America when there is little in him that hopes for the future.

They were children in boarding school when Tony had dreamt about flying cars and rockets to reach the stars. They were fourteen when Tony had admitted quietly into the night: _I don't want to make weapons._

When Steve had promised that Tony could be anything he wanted. 

Steve never thought that so much would change, and yet, he's here, halfway across the world from home, scouting for HYDRA bases in the area. 

It's been nearly ten years since he last spoke with Tony. But he wears Stark tech that SHIELD provides him with. He knows he can trust his weapons, but he doesn't know if he can trust his heart.

Bucky is waiting for Steve to come back to their hideout, and Steve lengthens his strides, uncomfortable with leaving Bucky for too long alone. He's more worried than usual with this being Bucky's first mission in three years, the first since Bucky had gone off radar for a year, captured by HYDRA until an anonymous tip had led Agent Carter straight to the newly named Winter Soldier. 

His communicator - the one reserved for emergencies - buzzes in his pocket.

Steve frowns, slipping into a deserted alley.

"Captain Rogers. 35-45-55-1967," he confirms his identity.

"Steve." It's Agent Carter, but the crack at the edge of his name tells him she's calling as _Peggy_. "We need you."

He braces himself. "Why?"

"Tony is missing."

The wall Steve is facing is grey concrete. 

There are watermarks from the recent rain, the ticking down of time and life marring it. Steve clenches his fist, nails digging hard into his palm. "Where's the plane?"

"The Madripoor airbase," Peggy's reply comes quick.

 _If you need somebody and there’s no one else to turn to_ , Steve had promised Tony that last night years ago - a lifetime ago. _If you come through a rainy patch and you need a shield, you can always find me_. 

For Peggy to be so terrified to pull Steve off this mission means something went horribly wrong. It might mean that they need Captain America, or at the very least, the supersoldier beneath the stars and stripes.

He thinks back to the magazine stand from earlier, the new weapons printed beside Tony's face, and all the truths he knows about Tony. He doesn't know who he'll find at the end of this - because he will find Tony. He _will._

But whether it's an old friend who smells like home or a stranger who tastes like a hundred different women, Steve doesn't know.

It isn't fair for him to question it either.

"We'll be ready for take off in twenty minutes," Steve tells Peggy. 

None of it matters, anyway.

Steve's heart can have nothing to do with the mission.

* * *

Fifty one times.

In the last ten years, Steve has stopped fifty one assassination and kidnapping attempts on Tony. There was one particularly bad month with seven attempts, right after Tony announced the newest line of repulsor tech satellite targeting missiles, but Steve had stopped them in time and Tony went on walking to the next party without knowing that a sniper had been pointed at his head.

Part of SHIELD's elite STRIKE team, Steve spends his nights hunting down HYDRA and his days keeping tabs on the people most important to him. If those people also happen to be among the most important people in the world, it's an extra perk that lets him keep Tony safe without too much interference from SHIELD.

He had ramped up his efforts to keep watch over Tony after the dreadful years when Bucky had gone missing - no one else should have to fall into HYDRA's hands, least of all Tony.

He's made too many mistakes, and he doesn't want Tony to be one of them.

They might not have talked for a decade, Steve might not recognise the person Tony is now, but he has to believe that there is more good than bad in Tony, has to have faith that the kind boy who was once his friend from a long lost childhood still remains, even if Steve might never meet him again.

Fifty one times.

How did he fail this time?

There had been no chatter on the underground radios, no hint that something would go astray. 

Steve stares into the expanse of light blue sky, the world moving on and uncaring.

He closes his eyes, and doesn't let himself break.

He doesn't deserve the luxury of falling apart.

* * *

The Jericho launch, an ambush. 

Rhodey calls in when Steve's plane is above Myanmar. His head is wrapped in bandages, medical staff milling in the background of the video feed. 

"We had decoys," Rhodey repeats shakily, with red-rimmed eyes. "Someone leaked the security details. They knew exactly which Humvee to attack."

"We've always known there was a leak in Stark Industries," Steve nods.

On the other screen, Peggy points at Bucky beside him. "You're dropping Barnes off at the Gulmira airbase. Then you're coming to New York, Captain."

Steve balks. "I can do more good on the ground."

"Agent Wilson is flying over the desert. With Rhodes and Barnes on the field, I need you at headquarters," Peggy insists. "You're going to finish what we started before Howard Stark's crash."

"Is Romanoff being called in?" Bucky asks, metal arm squeezing Steve's shoulder. A silent plea to _stand down_.

"Yes," Peggy confirms. "We're taking this problem from two sides." More softly, she adds, "Steve, we need your head for strategy. Your memories, too."

"Listen to her," Rhodey says. "I sure as hell want Captain America here, but whoever _fucking_ leaked Tony's location? I want them caught."

They'd retrieved the bodies of everyone in Tony's humvee except for Tony. Tony's phone had been found a behind an outcropping of rock, screen cracked, in a pool of blood that was a match for Tony. The desert winds mean Agent Wilson is on site collecting any evidence they can before the winds carry all traces away in the dust and merciless sands. 

An almost perfect crime.

Steve aches to go down when Bucky leaves the plane at Gulmira, but he doesn't. He gives Bucky a hug. "Don't you go missing too."

"I won't, punk. Once is enough."

That earns a wan smile from Steve. Something fiercely bitter claws at him that he clamps down. Better to put his anger and resentment into finding Tony. 

All Steve wants is a chance to breathe: he's become a supersoldier, fought on hundreds of battlefields, protected Tony from a bombing at the _Ritz_ , let go of the sweet comfort of Tony's arms, saved his best friend from being tortured, and hunted down HYDRA bases. He wants to rest. To put down all the _war_ staining his hands red.

But there is always the next mission, always HYDRA rearing its ugly head.

His chest feels full, threatening to burst with everything he's tried to lock away. 

The jittery fear when he straps on his shield, knowing the day has to end in blood. The longing when he calls his Ma and her gentle acceptance that means she never asks when he's coming home. The hot _need_ when he sees Tony's smile plastered on the side of a bus, the need to touch, to know what he had done to make Tony push him away. The grief, the hurt, the sleepless nights - they build up, making his chest tight.

If they don't find Tony - Steve remembers that final conversation with the man that he loved, that he loves now, in spite of everything. _For the record,_ Tony had held his head high, _I love you_.

Steve refuses for an argument to be the last thing - the last time he ever sees Tony.

He had tried to move on. Had spent four months dating Sharon Carter, had gone out twice with the lady from Accounting and spent a week working out his frustrations in bed with a man in Johannesburg. 

When the sun rose, however, he would find himself preparing too-sweet coffee and searching for the nearest donut shop and it wouldn't have been fair to anyone. 

How do you let go of the sun once you've let it burn you, mark you?

Steve had always thought - _hoped_ \- that his paths would cross with Tony's again, one day. Whether it was when Tony was happily married with a child or when they were both old and grey and as lonely as they had been when Tony had snuck into Steve's dorm room lifetimes ago - it felt impossible to move on when they had hurt each other so much.

When they had healed each other too.

Steve takes a deep breath. Then another. And another.

Until his hands don't shake and his back can stand straight beneath the weight of his regret.

He _will_ find Tony.

He's lost too much, been through too much to stomach another blow, another loss.

* * *

Twenty nine days, twelve hours, and forty seven minutes. 

Rhodey and Bucky has made no progress. Steve counts not punching Stane as progress.

The table beneath Steve's hand cracks. 

He's in Stark Industries' Los Angeles office. Obadiah Stane wants control over the company to handle the fallout from the company losing not just leadership, but also the brilliance of Tony's genius.

Steve had worked with the equally brilliant Pepper Potts to seal the vacuum of leadership, issuing a government order to freeze any legal proceedings that gave company control to Stane.

The bulk of SI's stock is Tony's, so it counts for little that Stane almost desperately wants to roll out the rest of the Jericho line to raise company performance. Stane can't do it.

And it's taken Steve's utmost self-control to not rage at Stane for not putting Tony first. 

Pepper offers Steve a drink. Coffee.

"We don't have anything else except Stane's whiskey," Pepper says apologetically.

Steve lets go of the table. He can smell the sugar in the coffee, and it's so _Tony_ that his legs buckle for the briefest moments. "Tony always said tea is leaf juice," he finds it in himself to smile.

"And he drinks less than people believe," Pepper pulls out the chair next to Steve, sitting down. When put together, she had spent more time with Tony than Steve ever did. She knows well enough that Tony never drinks anything but coffee in the workshop. "Tony talked about you, Captain. He wouldn't want you to run yourself ragged like this."

"He's one to talk," Steve huffs. "He runs himself ragged more than I do."

"Tony likes to say we're similar. We badger him too much about taking care of himself," Pepper fishes a key card from her pocket, passing it to Steve under the table. "But I take chaos and try to shape it into order," she continues. "You, Captain, you take chaos and find the good in it."

The key card, Steve discovers in the privacy of the SHIELD-issued car, gives access to Tony's Malibu Mansion that Stane has so far barred any investigators from entering. 

Flipping it around, he sees Pepper's penned a message onto the card: _Stane talked to Tony before awards @ Caesars_.

Tony's last night before leaving for the weapons demo was spent... well. 

Steve is familiar with Christine Everhart's blonde hair and admittedly stellar journalism. Before that, however, Tony was supposed to receive the Apogee Award, but Stane had been the one to take the stage.

It's more than normal for Tony to forget appointments - god knows how many dates Tony had nearly missed with Steve. 

Still, if Pepper thinks it deserves further digging, Steve isn't about to leave a stone unturned after nearly a month of no useful leads.

Steve treads lightly over the marble stone of the Malibu Mansion, wincing at the loud echoes of his own footsteps.

Glass windows stretch from floor to ceiling. The grand piano sits in the corner, a thin sheet of dust covering it. The sofa is the same one that Steve had fallen asleep on a decade ago as he waited for Tony to come out of the workshop, wondering, _worrying_ until whatever they had between them had snapped.

How many more people have fallen asleep on the sofa? 

The potted plants _have_ changed, though. Somehow, Tony has managed to make edelweiss flowers grow beneath the glass waterfall, with a shrub of blue forget-me-nots tucked beside it, hidden away from view if you didn't know where to look.

Steve brushes away the dust gathering on the staircase railing to the workshop.

"JARVIS?" he tries.

The lights overhead turn on. Their brightness is exactly how Steve preferred them a decade ago - too dim for him, now. "Good afternoon, Captain Rogers. It's 3.49 PM. The weather in Malibu is 72 degrees with scattered clouds - "

"It's good to hear you," Steve pats the wall beneath one of the cameras he remembers. "Will Pepper's card give me workshop access?"

"Your biometric accesses to the workshop remain functional."

Steve frowns at the camera, suspicion making him sick. "Did he - " his throat is dry. "Did Tony never erase them?"

"Sir anticipated a day where you might require my assistance."

How many years had Steve wasted by staying away from Tony? Tony had been the one to push him away, but if he had cared about Steve all along, then _why?_

Taking the stairs down, Steve calmly keys in his code. _Compartmentalize_.

The workshop's chaos is achingly familiar. An unfinished coffee cup by the holotable. Several cars in various states of dismantling. And of course - DUM-E, rolling happily to Steve. Another bot that Steve doesn't recognise rolls over, on its arm a massive letter _U_.

"Hey buddy," Steve gives both bots a pat on their claws. "I miss Tony too." There are some truths easier to say to metal and steel and machine, who won't judge him for having a heart.

"If I might direct your attention to Sir's latest project, Captain?"

Well, except for JARVIS who is most certainly judging him. The bots follow him to the holotable that flares up with various machine parts that Steve tries to piece together in his head. He thinks he's looking at the schematics of the newest Jericho missile, and there's a collection of - "Was Tony planning to launch a new line of health tech?"

"Indeed, Captain. However, the need to divert funds from the Jericho II line development meant the project faced roadblocks. Sir met with Mr. Stane to discuss the issue multiple times. The last was thirty seven hours before Sir's disappearance."

Before the award show at Caesars Palace, then. "JARVIS," Steve taps on one of the holograms, watching it expand to become a prosthetic arm, the exact kind Bucky has. "I need logs of all of Stane's contacts in the past year, and I need all of Tony's records on me."

"Commencing log retrieval. Unfortunately, you do not have access for the latter request."

"Who has access?"

"Ms. Virginia Potts and Mrs. Sarah Rogers."

"My _mother?_ " Steve's frown grows. "She doesn't - "

"I assure you my records of Sir's security protocols have been regularly updated."

Steve files that away for later. The most important things first. He knows Rhodey has been using JARVIS' satellite help to scan the deserts, but Steve can't only sit here not doing something concrete to actually find Tony. "JARVIS, can you do a scan of smoke in the area around Tony's last location? Especially at night time, any particles associated with smoke."

The deserts are cold, and the smoke from campfires at night _must_ go somewhere.

"Of course, Captain."

"Can I see Tony's phone data?"

The prototypes disappear from the holotable, morphing into a new interface. Tony's last contact was a video call with Stane, then an aborted call to Pepper Potts. Most of it isn't very useful: he ignores the fact that his number - his newest number from a year ago, that nobody except six people should have - is on Tony's speed dial. That's another SHIELD security breach that Steve can chase down later. 

He pauses as he sees the folders in Tony's gallery. This was - this felt wrong. No doubt Rhodey has gone through everything, there isn't anything for Steve to double check here. This is just his inability to wait quietly as JARVIS finishes compiling Stane's logs. Steve has no right to barge even further into Tony's life, especially when he hadn't been brave enough to come back here before Tony had gone missing.

"Captain, do you require any assistance?"

"No, I just - " he taps on one of the pictures. A selfie with a supermodel. He scrolls down a few days. Snapshots of some welding gear. A newspaper report about veterans and Captain America's legacy. Steve swallows. He scrolls down some more until he reaches the last picture. "JARVIS, is this what I think this is?"

The timestamp is a second after the failed call to Pepper, and it's - there's fire in the background, on the right edge is the back wheels of what must be the humvees, and there's a man in uniform that is decidedly _not_ the Air Force's rangers. With a large beard, the man is holding a Stark gun. 

Peggy was right.

It's time they solved this old case, root out all the rats hiding behind the towering riches of Stark Industries.

"Have you run facial detection?" Steve asks JARVIS, who replies in the most disgruntled tone an AI can have.

"Of course, Captain. The man is shown in official records to have died four years prior."

"Then fetch me all of the man's contacts before he died, please."

"With pleasure."

* * *

Day forty is when things start to crumble. Stane is tired of waiting, and the government is tired of expending resources in a strict war zone.

Steve is tired of all their leads turning to dust.

They find base after base full of stolen Stark weaponry and a new underground group calling themselves the Ten Rings, but never the right one. Or perhaps they've found the right one, just never realised Tony's body was in it.

No. _No_. After all that Tony has been to Steve, Steve owes it to him to not give up. 

And yet, Rhodey is saying otherwise. Rhodey is - 

"The government wants to declare him dead. The Air Force is sending me back to New York."

Steve sucks in a sharp breath. Rhodey's face looks ragged in the video screen, tired with deep shadows that reflect the hollow pit of Steve's stomach, the gnawing, aching emptiness stretching on.

"Peggy can pull some strings," Steve scrambles for anything to hold onto because Tony cannot be gone. 

"Agent Carter is... she didn't tell you?" Rhodey asks. "She's stepping down as Director of SHIELD."

"Agent Fury is replacing her, yes." That's a thought. Fury has a direct line to SHIELD's most classified, last resort asset named Captain Danvers. "But Peggy will still have her contacts, people she can call in favors."

Rhodey rubs his temples wearily, the video feed blurring for a second. "If the Ten Rings think we're not searching for him, that might make them less cautious."

"So you're fine with them declaring Tony dead," Steve woodenly says.

"I don't like this any more than you do," Rhodey reminds him through gritted teeth, "he's my friend. And I stayed by him through the worst and the best. That's more than you can say, Captain."

There are a thousand and one excuses on the tip of his tongue. He says none of them. 

"I'm sorry. I was an ass," Steve sighs. "I should have come back earlier, I shouldn't have let him push me away."

"I hated you, you know? Tony would have given you the world if you asked for it, the stars if you wanted it," Rhodey quietly confesses, the fierce anger receeding into cold fact. "And you walked away from him."

"Because I didn't want the world. He was destroying himself trying to give it to me." Steve bows his head, eyes closed against the memory of those last weeks he had spent with Tony: the empty beds, the way Tony's face would twist at Steve, unhappy and afraid. "He wouldn't listen to me, and I couldn't watch him burn himself any more." 

Steve watches as something in Rhodey's expression twitches, and on screen, Rhodey's hand fiddles with a pen. "Tony wouldn't have let you come back. He was trying to find himself, and he needed to do it alone." The truth stings, but Rhodey goes on, "I don't think he was ready for you. I don't think you were ready for him either - and I doubt any of us can be ready for him."

"We were young and stupid."

"You were young and learning. And Tony is special."

Steve's lips twitch up. Special is an understatement. "You love him," Steve says. There's no jealousy, only a kindred feeling.

Rhodey shrugs. "Not the way he loves you."

"I doubt he loves me now, after everything wrong I've done."

"We don't choose who loves us, or why. I hated everything you did that hurt him," Rhodey takes a drink from a flimsy paper cup, and Steve swallows down the guilt. "But you never really forget your childhood home. The streets, the rooms, the paintings on the wall - they don't quite leave you like everything that comes after."

Steve knows. It's etched in him, all the small things about Tony: his favorite flower, the piano lullabies Tony loved most, the constellations he wanted to visit, and the way Tony snored in his sleep. If Tony is gone - if they really never find Tony - Steve doesn't know what to do with himself, with the universe of tiny memories stitched together to make the bright ball of want, of regret, of _home_ lodged irremovable in his chest.

"I was afraid that he would push me away again if I came back. I don't want to hurt him more," Steve admits. Then, "I'm done being afraid."

"Let's hope you get the chance to tell Tony that."

"Thank you for being there for him, Colonel," Steve hopes the truth of his words are clear through the call.

Rhodey bows his head. "I'll be back in New York in two days. I expect you to be there for the reading of - of Tony's will."

The two words - _Tony's will_ \- send a sharp cold down Steve's spine, heavy and impossible to process. "I'll see you then." His voice comes out choked.

* * *

Steve spends the next two days studiously avoiding the Stark Mansion in New York. There are far too many ghosts there that he isn't prepared to face yet. Rhodey was right, after all. Neither Steve nor Tony had been quite as ready as they thought they were to try push their friendship in a new direction. Their edges were too rough, and Tony would've argued friction meant heat and heat was _good_ , but they were in their twenties with the world on their shoulders.

Tony had the future to carry, and Steve was doing his best to hide Captain America, carrying a legacy he didn't know how to hold together, searching for a purpose other than war. 

With very few people to turn to, Steve finds himself standing in the doorway of his Ma's apartment, his last safe haven that he hasn't messed up in his stubbornness and blindness.

"My _darling_ boy," Sarah pulls Steve into a hug. "I heard the news."

"I'm sorry for not calling sooner," Steve leans gratefully into it. Sarah Rogers is a small woman, but she holds him up as easily as ever.

"You're here now," she says with a cough, "you have better things to worry about than me."

Steve smiles wanly. "America forgets her founding mothers too often. I won't make the same mistake." He takes in her paler than usual skin. "Have you taken your medicine?"

"Of course I have. And it's _my_ job to worry about you. Not the other way 'round."

"I wish I could give you my serum," Steve leads her to sit down on the couch. No matter how hard Steve had tried to give her a bigger, more comfortable home, she insisted on staying in their tiny Brooklyn flat. He can't quite blame her: he got his stubbornness from her, after all. But he _can_ wish that his mother wasn't getting sick more often, wasn't coughing every five minutes or so, her lungs giving her trouble.

The serum could have saved so many others. It saved Steve instead - another burden that he has to carry, all the hearts and dreams of everyone who could've been him.

"No," his Ma pats his cheek, grinning. "America isn't ready yet to have me as her Captain."

Steve barks a laugh. Heading to the kitchen, he rummages through the fridge to get her favorite lime juice, pouring two glasses of it. "I don't know if I can be her Captain either."

"You'll find Tony," she cuts right to the core of it. "Or Tony will find you."

"Not even you can know that."

Sarah tuts at him. "I know both of you, and I know how bullheaded you two get. Tony isn't one for giving up."

"I wish I could believe that. I really do."

"Tony visited me," she sips her juice innocently. "How many years has it been since you last saw him? Ten? Every December 16th, he visits me and promises me he'll keep you safe."

That's the date of Howard and Maria's crash. Suddenly, despite the serum, he finds it hard to breathe. How - why - "Why are you telling me this _now?_ "

"It wasn't my secret to tell," his Ma says, putting down her glass of juice with a thud. "But if it helps you to find him, you should know that he gave me this for safekeeping." She reaches into her pocket, fist opening up to reveal an unassuming flashdrive. Black, non-descript. _Ms. Virginia Potts and Mrs. Sarah Rogers_ , JARVIS had said. "Tony promised me that if I needed help, this should do the trick."

 _Oh god_. His hand shakes.

"Ma," Steve grabs onto it like a lifeline. "Ma, this is - I need to go."

"Bring Tony home, you hear me?" his Ma kisses the top of his head. "Stay safe."

"I will. I - thank you, Ma."

"Anything for you both."

* * *

Steve sits between Rhodey and Peggy. The lawyers and notary sits across them. At one head of the conference table is Pepper Potts - she was named Executor of Tony's will - and at the other head is Stane, seething but doing his best to hide it. 

There's the small mercy that the will reading hadn't taken place in the Stark Mansion, Pepper choosing the more neutral New York Stark Offices. He swallows down the wave of nausea that had hit him when Pepper had taken the remarkably plain piece of paper out of the envelope. 

_I, Anthony Edward Stark, being of sound mind and body, wilfully and voluntarily make known my desires that my moment of death shall not be artificially postponed._

To her credit, her voice doesn't crack even if her eyes are red-rimmed, the mascara doing nothing to hide her grief.

Forty five days, now.

Funny how easily life could crumble, how quickly.

Most of it is simple: all of Tony's shares and assets in the company goes to Pepper. All of his patents and machinery to Rhodey. His properties go to Peggy to be turned into assets for charity, and -

"I hereby give, devise, and bequeath all the property and land of the address Malibu Point 10880, 90265 to Captain Steven Grant Rogers, absolutely and forever, on the condition that he learn the difference between Beethoven," Pepper frowns, "and a dying cat. Don't leave the piano unplayed, don't let DUM-E feed you smoothies."

Steve snorts, loud, and Stane glares daggers at him, but he laughs anyway, his cheeks wet - why _are_ his cheeks wet? Oh, he's crying. He shouldn't be crying now. Crying is useless. Captain America shouldn't be crying in front of lawyers. 

But the lawyers don't know he's Captain America, and, _God,_ how long has it been since that night? They hadn't even been fifteen - a different time in a different world when Tony would hammer out his frustrations on the piano instead of on hard, unforgiving metal. 

Children. Not ready yet for what life would throw at them.

He misses what Pepper says as he wipes the wetness on his cheeks away, thankful for Rhodey squeezing his shoulder to ground him. He must've missed something pretty important, though, because there's a - that's a velvet ring box on the table in front of Steve.

"What?" he whispers, afraid.

Pepper bites her lip. "That was in the envelope, marked for you."

Steve feels the weight of everyone's gazes, but Stane's is heaviest, and Steve understands without having to open it. _No_.

But he has never been able to back down from anything.

The box flips open soundlessly -

 _No_ , his mind screams again, _no_. There's a gold ring. Simple. Plain. Inlaid with only one stripe of dark sapphire. And there's a folded up piece of paper with Tony's too familiar scrawl.

_For when you find the right partner. I hope they make you as happy as you've made me._

Fuck. Steve can't. He can't think. He can't look at Stane's sour face. He - he takes the cold metal of the ring out of its soft resting place. It's small in his palm, but with so much weight that Steve can't carry. Not this. Not this regret on top of everything else.

If Tony were here, there would be a joke about life being short, and Steve might've teased him back about shortness.

The sharp lance of fear returns, the stretch of days leading to an infinite hollowness if Tony is never found. If these are truly the last words he gets from Tony -

 _I've found the right partner_ , Steve wants to rail at the universe, wants to beg Tony to forgive him, but there are no gods and Tony is lost to him. He has only himself to claw at.

"Steve."

" _Steve_."

The second voice is Rhodey's.

"Yes?"

"Do you need anything?"

 _Tony_. _I need Tony_.

"No," Steve says. "No."

* * *

Steve's only consolation is that Stane didn't win. Not a single dollar of Tony's belongings fell to Stane's hands, and Pepper's new control of the company's ownership let her freeze the new weapons production.

Well. He has another consolation. 

The flashdrive his Ma gave him has all of Tony's research on the missing weapons, a backup of an AI named MARIA, dating as far back as when Steve was still involved in the mission. It fuels him on, the need to find Tony, and it lets him forget about the ring he had left with his Ma.

In the safety of the Malibu Mansion that Steve now calls his safehouse, JARVIS collates everything, sounding as surprised by the data as Steve - stored in a remote private server that even JARVIS had no access to. It speaks of paranoia. Steve wonders if he's opened a pandora's box by letting all this out, but he knows there's no going back - not if he wants to find Tony.

He flicks through the other files as JARVIS works to triangulate locations with their current search data. While the government may have chosen to move on, Peggy had made it her last act as Director of SHIELD to keep the search going, Bucky and Sam scouring the deserts for any sign of life.

Steve tries his damnedest to wrap his head around the schematics in Tony's private servers, shifting through something that resembles a new repulsor-tech vehicle called a 'Helicarrier', a flying medevac bay for disaster relief. _T_ _he Tony Stark I loved would never have let this happen_ , Steve had thrown the accusation at him ten years ago.

Swallowing down the guilt, Steve flips through another batch of files, hesitating only the slightest bit when he realises that they're hacked from SHIELD - details about a strange blue alien cube to do with clean energy, all of Steve's personnel files, analysis about the weak points of Steve's body armor and notes on upgrade requirements.

Why had Tony pushed him away when Tony cared _this much_? The thought comes as a punch. How many years had they spent loving each other in the wrong ways? Steve keeping assassins at bay and Tony adding shields to protect him? How does he move on after this?

 _Absolutely and forever_ , the will had dictated, forcing another legacy for Steve to carry on. He had stood on these cliffsides before Tony had built a home here, and something in him fears that he might stand on this cliffside long after everything Tony built has crumbled to dust.

"Captain, I have isolated the two most likely locations," JARVIS cuts through his wallowing. "Data from MARIA's archives show an uptick of missing palladium-based weapons making their way through the coordinates."

Steve takes a deep breath. The holotable in front of him flashes with two images. He taps on the left one, with an extensive network of old caves. 

"Can you call SHIELD for me, JARVIS?"

A dial tone, and then, a very disgruntled voice: "this better be fucking good, Rogers."

Frowning, he glances at the clock. Oh. It's two in the morning, and with Peggy retiring, the more prickly Agent Fury is on the phone. Steve forges onwards.

"I have a possible location on Tony Stark."

"Then call Barnes or someone who can _do_ something about it," Fury grumbles. There's a small ' _meow_ ' in the background - does Fury have a pet cat? 

Steve files that question for later. "I also need one of your agents to contact Pepper Potts. Tell her you suspect Stane of fraud, but don't let her confront him."

A loud sigh comes from Fury. "Rogers, you better be sure as hell you know what you're doing."

"Commander Fury, I have nearly all the evidence I need to implicate him."

"You're asking for a lot."

"I'm asking less than SHIELD's asked of me."

"Whoever said Stark would be the most difficult to handle certainly hasn't met you."

"Will you help me or not?" Steve looks out into the dark seas crashing at the cliffs outside the windows, the ticking of the world fighting against itself.

"Your quinjet was ready to take off five minutes ago."

The line cuts off. Steve has one more call to make.

* * *

Rhodey would normally have piloted the chopper, but this time, he sits across Steve. Coming here had been against his commanding officer's orders. Steve is sure, however, that as much as Rhodey believes in the system, his oldest, strongest loyalty doesn't belong to the government.

A knock comes on the chopper's window: Sam, flying next to them in his Falcon gear, the Afghan sand dunes stretching beneath them.

"Three minutes out from the explosion site!" Sam shouts over whirring of the chopper's blades, just loud enough for Steve's enhanced hearing to pick up. Steve gives him a nod, strapping on the last of his gear. Their radars had spotted a large explosion this morning in the vicinity of the location Steve found, and they won't risk anything.

"Tony better be down there," Rhodey mutters, "otherwise, when my C.O. gives me a dressing down for gallivanting with an Army Captain," he gives Steve an approximation of a grin, "I'm gonna put all the blame on that Stark tardiness."

Steve starts to reply, but another knock on the window stops him. Sam is pointing down, his words urgent. "I see someone!"

"A friendly?" Steve shouts back, all too aware of everyone staring at him, waiting tensely. 

The soldiers on the chopper with him had volunteered to come. The closest friends of those who had been in Tony's ambushed convoy - they're hungry with the need to find whoever had caused so much needless death. Steve understands the burning need for closure. He can only be grateful that these soldiers hadn't been on scene to witness the ambush.

Slowly, Steve watches Sam nod. Rhodey's back stiffens immediately, orders to land shouted out by reflex. The words ring in Steve's ears.

A straggler in the middle of a vast desert. It _has_ to be, it - don't hope.

Red sand dust puffs up as the choppers descend, obscuring Sam from view, and Steve resists the need to move, to bounce his legs, waiting for the slight thump that signals a proper landing. Rhodey already has his hand on the door latch -

"Weapons ready," Rhodey commands the soldiers, "it may be a friendly, or it may be a trap." The chopper lists to one side, then another, and then, the thump Steve is looking for. Rhodey pulls open the hatch, "go, go, people!"

They jump off into the cloud of dust that's starting to settle down, and Steve hears some soldiers coughing. He follows Rhodey's lead, the faint sound of lone shouts guiding them both.

It sounds like -

There! Over the sand ridge to the east -

Rhodey runs.

Steve freezes, a soldier bumping harshly into his back.

Ten years. Ten. 

"Next time, you ride with me," he hears Rhodey say even from this distance, and that's - that's Tony in his arms. Unmistakably Tony.

Steve braves a step forward. The sand makes his boots heavy. He takes another step.

A laugh, high-pitched and raspy, reaches Steve.

How can Tony be laughing?

Tony's bare shoulders are covered in sprays of blood, a jacket wrapped around his head - it lodges something in Steve's throat, the unsaid words, the regret, the ring, the... the sheer, selfish relief. 

Someone else bumps into Steve's shoulder, more gently this time. "Go on," Sam's voice comes to him as if from far away. "

In the end, it's Tony that comes to Steve, stumbling across the sand beside Rhodey, teeth gritted in a distinctly stubborn look that Steve had feared he might never see again. This Tony is vastly different from the man splayed across magazine cover - Steve scans his face quickly, desperately, noting down the unruly stubble, the afternoon sun making Tony's eyes squint in a grimace like he would when waking up in the morning, and the - the bright light?

The bright light in Tony's chest.

It makes Steve freeze again.

They're barely ten feet away, now, and Tony's squint becomes more pronounced. Steve watches numbly, uncomprehendingly, as Tony adjusts his grip on Rhodey's shoulder. In sync, Rhodey's hand moves around Tony's waist to prop him up.

"Rhodey," Tony mumbles, the cut on his lip a dark red, "he's not really here is he?"

Steve watches Rhodey frown. "Who?"

"Ste - Rogers. I can't - I need water if I'm seeing mirages," Tony's hand grips Rhodey's shoulder tighter.

Taking a step closer, Steve shakes his head. "I'm here," he tells Tony.

"Yeah, well, you've been telling me that for three months now," Tony snaps out, which makes Rhodey cast a questioning look at Steve, and which Steve returns with equal confusion.

"Steve _is_ here," Rhodey tries, motioning with his free hand for Steve to come even closer. "Do you mind if he helps me get you in the chopper?"

Tony squints at him uncertainly, silently, and in the end, it's Steve who gives Rhodey a small shake of his head. He wants to touch Tony, to hold him and to ask what the hell that light in his chest was, but this isn't about what Steve needs right now. Three months in the desert - his first priority has to be getting Tony to the closest airbase for a full medical check. 

Signalling to Sam, Steve calls him over to help carry Tony the last few feet into the waiting medevac chopper. 

Together, Sam and Rhodey lift Tony into the chopper, and Steve climbs into the chopper next to it, eyeing the sand separating them. He's done his part. He's found Tony. He's lost any right to be on the medevac with Tony, especially when his presence seems to be making Tony confused.

Through the chopper's open door, Steve watches with a tight chest as Tony collapses into the stretcher laid out for him, and _God_ , Tony tries to sit up, lashing out against the doctor trying to push him back down.

Rhodey shouts something - and suddenly Sam is back, tugging Steve out of the second chopper towards the one Tony is in, half dragging Steve's feet through the sand.

"He won't listen to me," Steve warns.

Sam flips up his flight goggles, meeting Steve dead in the eye. "He's not listening to Rhodey, so do your best to calm him or that chopper's not going to be able to take off safely."

The passenger space that Steve climbs up to is cramped, half the floor taken up by Tony's stretcher, a doctor, a nurse, and Rhodey scrambling desperately to get Tony calm. The jacket that had been wrapped around Tony's head has been tossed to the floor, filthy with grime, and through the thin shirt he has left, the bright light whirrs loudly.

"You're not taking it," Tony snarls, "I'm not building you a single damn _thing_."

"We're not asking you to build anything," Rhodey moves to dodge Tony's swinging fists. Then, to Steve, "he's having a flashback, I think it's the stretcher."

"Or the doctor," Steve kneels low to be level with Tony. He knows better than to touch someone in a flashback without permission, and he swallows down his guilt and fear to shove away the tremor in his voice, keeping his words firm and steady. If Rhodey can't bring Tony out of it, he doubts he'll be of any help. But he has to try. "Tony, you're safe. We found you."

"You're not real," Tony tells Steve through gritted teeth, eyes flashing wild. "You're not real. Steve wouldn't be here, so whatever the _fuck_ you're trying, Raza - "

"If you need a friend," Steve repeats his promise from a decade ago, his words a whispered prayer, "if you come through a rainy patch and you need a shield, you can always find me. I will _always_ find you."

"Steve?" Tony eyes shift into focus, hand making an aborted move towards him.

"I keep my promises."

"Technically," Tony says through gritted teeth, finally lying down on the stretcher, a bead of sweat running down his hairline, "I found you."

"We found each other."

"I'm still angry at you, Rogers."

A gentle thud behind Steve signals the door shutting close, the chopper ready for takeoff. "I'm also pissed at you for making me worry," Steve smiles back at him, "we'll talk when we get you checked up."

Tony visibly swallows, gaze darting uneasily at the doctor and nurse seated next to Rhodey. "Don't let them take - my heart. It's - "

"The light?" Steve frowns.

"Fancy pacemaker."

 _Pacemaker?_ Not the time for these questions. "Will you at least let them put an IV in?"

A second of hesitance, and then, "yes."

Steve gives a nod to the doctor, who starts moving, wiping an antiseptic across the back of Tony's thin, _thin_ hands. There are splotches of red where the skin seems burnt from more than just a sun - had Tony been too near a fire?

"No more fun-vee for you," Rhodey comes around to settle on the chopper's floor beside Steve. "You're in for one hell of a debrief."

Tony winces. "I'm sick. Dealing with bureau - bureaucracy makes me crazy."

"You're healthy enough to argue with me," Rhodey points out, with a softness that makes Steve look away, a pang hitting him.

He feels like an intruder, awkward, as Tony grins up at Rhodey, bruised cheeks and all. "I missed you, honeybear," Tony says.

Rhodey laughs, taking Tony's hand to stop him from picking at the medical tape keeping the IV needle in place. "I don't envy what Pepper's going to do to you when you get back."

"Ugh," Tony groans. 

There's something off about it, though - but Steve wonders whether he still knows Tony well enough to spot when things are off. A certain heaviness in the tone of it, the restless fidgeting of Tony's fingers beneath Rhodey's grip.

"We're four minutes out from base," Steve reports.

That makes Tony turn to him, coughing. "I didn't know you were in the area, Captain."

 _Captain_. Not Steve, certainly not _sweetheart_. "I had JARVIS triangulate locations using MARIA," he tells Tony. "You should be meeting with a Commander Fury soon."

"I burned everything," Tony says quietly, "Fury won't find anything in those caves that I haven't destroyed."

In the tired heaviness of the question, it suddenly clicks in Steve. ' _Who did you lose?_ ' he wants to ask, ' _who did you leave behind?_ '

And then, a more jarring realisation. It's not just grief behind the heaviness. It's war, and the weight of firing a gun, of putting your hand on a pulse and finding nothing.

It's a weight that Steve has to carry every day.

"You rest, first," Steve tells him. "You sleep, and you eat."

Next to him, Rhodey nods. "We'll get some burgers flown in for you, if you can keep some food down."

The doctor makes a noise of disapproval. "I recommend soft foods for Mr. Stark - "

Tony flinches at the name, harder than usual. Had his captors called him that? Steve gives the doctor a warning look before promising, "we'll get you pudding then. And some warm, sweet coffee."

"I knew there was a reason I loved you," Tony mutters drowsily.

Steve jerks back, the words stinging. He tries to come up with anything to reply, the jerky landing of the chopper distracting him. Compartmentalizing doesn't seem to be working, not when he's far too compromised.

But by the time Steve comes up with a semblance of a coherent sentence, Tony's eyes have fallen shut, his breaths coming in and out with a slight wheezing. 

"I'm not letting you walk away again," Steve sighs to himself. "I'm not letting myself walk away from you."

Rhodey gives Steve's shoulder a quick squeeze as the chopper lands in the air base. 

For this, for loving Tony, they didn't need words.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [tumblr](https://starklysteve.tumblr.com) :)


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